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CONTRABAND 

* 8 ? 


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/ 


Books by 

CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND 


Youth Challenges 

The High Flyers 

The Little Moment of Happiness 

Scattergood Baines 

Conflict 

Contraband 

The Hidden Spring 

The Source 

Sudden Jim 


HARPER & BROTHERS 

Publishers 





i 


CONTRABAND 


By 

Clarence Budington Kelland 

Author of 

“youth challenges” “the high flyers” 

“the little moment of happiness” 
“SCATTERGOOD BAINES” 

“CONFLICT’’ etc. 



3 

> 3 
3 > 

> ) 3 

3 


9 


Harper & Brothers Publishers 

New York and London 




CONTRABAND 


Copyright, 1923 
By Harper & Brothers 
Printed in the U.S.A. 


First Edition 

A-X 


©C1A698503 







CONTRABAND 


/ 


i 



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CHAPTER I 

T UBAL gave the key another quarter turn in the 
quoins and tested the security of the type in 
the form with the heel of his grimy hand. After 
which he shut his eyes very tight and ran his tongue 
carefully over his upper teeth and clucked. Then, in 
the voice of one who pronounces a new and wonder¬ 
ful thought he spoke: 

“Simmy,” he said, “I dunno. Mebby so—mebby 
not. There’s p’ints in favor and p’ints against.” 

“I,” said Simmy with the cocksureness of his 
seventeen years, “am goin’ to git through. Don’t 
ketch me workin’ for no woman.” 

“She’s one of them college wimmin we’ve been 
readin’ about.” 

“Makes it wuss. Wimmin,” said Simmy, who 
had given deep thought to such matters and reached 
profound conclusions, “hain’t got no business gittin’ 
all eddicated up. What they ought to study is cook 
books. That’s what / say.” 

“Calc’late she’ll be gifted with big words.” 

“She’ll wear them kind of glasses,” said Simmy, 
“that ’ll make you think you’re lookin’ into the show 

1 


CONTRABAND 

winders of the Busy Big Store if you come onto her 
face to face/’ 

“Simmy, I’ll tell you suthin’. . . . I’ll be fifty 
year old, come September, and I hain’t never married 
one of ’em yit.” 

“I hain’t never goin’ to marry, neither.” 

“Shake,” said Tubal. 

There ensued a silence while Tubal completed the 
locking of the form and secured it on the job press. 

“Well,” said Tubal for the hundredth time, “Ob 
Man Nupley’s dead and gone.” 

“Seems like he might ’a’ left this here paper to you 
’n’ me that’s worked and slaved fer him, instid of to 
this female nephew of his’n. . . .” 

“Niece,” corrected Tubal. “No. . . . Ol’ Man 
Nupley wa’n’t fond of me, but he didn’t owe me no 
grudge to warrant him wishin’ this thing onto me. 
Say, we got out two issues since he passed away, 
hain’t we? You ’n’ me—alone and unaided. . . . 
Gawd!” Tubal mopped his brow at recollection of 
the mental anguish suffered in achieving this feat of 
editorship. 

“They was dum good issues,” Simmy said, 
pride fully. 

Tubal was not without his pride in the accomplish¬ 
ment—a pride tinctured with doubt which had been 
made acute that very morning when he stopped in 
the post office for the mail. Certain of the village’s 
professional humorists had greeted him with en¬ 
thusiasm, and quoted from his works with relish. 
Tubal had been very much put to it for copy to fill 

2 


CONTRABAND 


the paper, and had seized upon every incident, great 
or small, as worthy of mention, and as lengthy men¬ 
tion as he could achieve. He had not used one word 
where there was a possibility of enlisting two. For 
instance, after hearing it quoted, he felt there 
was some defect in the style of the personal which 
stated: 

Our fellow townsman, Herbert Whitcomb, has painted his 
large and spacious and comfortable residence on Pine Street near 
the corner with a coat of white paint. Herb did the job him¬ 
self, working evenings, but not Sundays, he being a Methodist 
and superintendent of the Sunday School. Many assembled to 
watch our Selectman and tyler of the Masonic lodge (Herb) 
working at the job of painting his residence, and thus, besides 
showing public spirit in improving the general appearance of 
our village, gave many something to do, there being no other 
amusement in town. Good for you, Herb. That is the spirit 
we like. 

He had rather fancied the item about Jim Bagby, 
and considered he had filled the maximum space with 
a minute piece of news. 

Jim Bagby our prominent farmer and Democrat from north 
of town, has been dynamiting out the stumps out of the pasture 
lot that he has used to pasture cattle. Jim used for the pur¬ 
pose the best and most powerful brand of dynamite he could 
get and the numerous explosions of the dynamite, each blast re¬ 
moving a stump out of the pasture, could be heard the length 
and breadth of the village. Dynamite, says Jim, is the thing 
to make the wilderness blossom like a rose. Another year we 
hope to see the pasture out of which Jim dynamited the stumps 
covered with the verdure of potatoes or other garden truck. 

Tubal recalled the mental anguish which went into 
the composition of these and columns of other simi¬ 
lar items, and solemnly renounced forever the digni¬ 
ties of editorship. 

3 ' 


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“No,” he said, waggling his head gravely, “I 
calc’late OF Man Nupley done us a favor by leavin’ 
this sheet to somebody else.” 

“She’ll be cornin’ on the noon train,” said Simmy. 
“That’s when I quit.” 

“I s’pose,” Tubal said, as he cocked his eye at a 
cockroach scurrying across the floor, “she’ll favor 
Ol’ Man Nupley in looks. Seems like that’s a cross 
heavier ’n any woman ought to bear.” He estimated 
the rate of progress of the roach, and, as it were, 
brought down his bird with a supremely skillfully 
aimed deluge of the juice of the weed. “If wimmin 
is goin’ to insist on keepin’ on bein’ wimmin, they 
ought to see to it you kin look at ’em without 
sufferm’.” 

“Mebby she’s jest cornin’ up to sell out,” said 
Simmy, hopefully. 

“Sell? Sell this here rag? . . . Say!” 

“Why not, I’d like to know?” 

“Because,” said Tubal, “it owes about two hun¬ 
dred dollars more ’n it’s wuth . . . and, now we lost 
the county advertisin’, it ’ll owe a dum sight more.” 

He walked to the door which gave from the front 
of the shop to the business and editorial office of the 
paper, and there he stood as if upon some vantage 
point, surveying all that existed of the Gibeon Free 
Press. What he saw was not especially inviting; 
nowhere was an indication of that romance which is 
believed to lurk about the business of disseminating 
news. The shop wore the haphazard look of a junk 
yard, contented to recline and snore in dust and frow- 

4 


CONTRABAND 

ziness. The room wore the air of a place where 
nothing ever happens and where nothing is apt to 
happen. . . . Just inside the door squatted the anti¬ 
quated, limping cylinder press which gave birth 
weekly to the Free Press, and which gave off with 
sullen brazenness the look of overmuch child-bearing. 
It knew it was going to break down in the middle 
of every run, and it had been cursed at so often and 
so fluently that it was utterly indifferent. It was a 
press without ambition. Of late years it had gotten 
into a frame of mind where it didn’t care a hang 
whether it printed a paper or not—which is an alarm¬ 
ing state of mind for a printing press to be in. . . . 
Over to the right were shelves of stock, ill sorted, 
dusty, dog eared at the corners where Tubal had 
rubbed his shoulder against them in passing. Thin 
stacks of red and blue board, upon which tickets for 
the Methodist lawn sociable or the Baptist chicken 
dinner might be painted, lopped with discouraged 
limpness over the edge of the shelving and said im¬ 
proper and insulting things to the slatternly press. A 
couple of stones elbowed each other and a case of 
type a little further back, and a comparatively new 
(and unpaid-for) job press, whose paint still existed 
even to shininess in spots, rather stuck up its nose 
at the rest of the company and felt itself altogether 
too good for such society. There was also a theo¬ 
retical spittoon—theoretical because it was the one 
spot in the room safe from Tubal’s unerring jets of 
tobacco juice. These were the high spots arising 
from a jumble of rubbish which it was easier to 

5 


CONTRABAND 


kick about from place to place than to remove al¬ 
together. . . . Tubal waggled his head. 

He turned to survey the business and editorial 
office, and found nothing there to uplift his soul. 
There was a grimy railing of matched lumber, inside 
which a table staggered under an accumulation of ex¬ 
changes and catalogues and old cuts brought in to 
pass the evening of their lives as paper weights. An 
old black-walnut desk with a bookcase in its second 
story tried to maintain a faded dignity beside an old 
safe from which the combination knob had been re¬ 
moved for fear somebody would shut and lock it, as 
once happened, with disastrous results. On the wall 
hung a group picture of the state legislature of 1882 . 
One could have bedded down a cow very comfortably 
in the waste paper on the floor. 

“Simmy,” said Jake, solemnly, “she’s a hell of a 
messy place. Seems like we ought to kind of tidy 
up some for the new proprietor—or suthin’. No use, 
though. Hain’t no place to begin. Only thing wuth 
cleanin’ up is the chattel mortgage Abner Fownes 
holds over the place. . . .” He turned and scowled 
at Simmy and smote his hands together. “By Jing 1 ” 
he said, “the’s one thing we kin do—-we kin wash 
your face. That ’ll show ” 

Simmy responded by jerking his thumb toward 
the front door, before which two men had paused, 
one a diminutive hunchback, the other an enormous, 
fleshy individual with a beard of the sort worn, not 
for adornment, but as the result of indolence which 
regards shaving as a labor not to be endured. The 

6 


CONTRABAND 


pair talked with manifest excitement for a moment 
before they entered. 

“Mornin’,” said Tubal. 

“Mornin’,” said the corpulent one. The hunchback 
squinted and showed his long and very white teeth, 
but did not respond verbally to the greeting. 

“Say,” said the big man, “seen the sheriff?” 

“Why?” replied Tubal. 

“ ’Cause,” said Deputy Jenney, “if you hain’t no¬ 
body has.” 

“Since last night about nine o’clock,” said the 
hunchback in the unpleasant, high-pitched voice not 
uncommon to those cursed as he was cursed. 

“He got off’n the front porch last night around 
nine o’clock and says to his wife he was goin’ out 
to pump him a pail of fresh water. Didn’t put on a 
hat or nothin’. . . . That’s the last anybody’s seen 
of him. Yes, sir. Jest stepped into the house and 
out of the back door-” 

“Mebby he fell down the well,” said Tubal, help¬ 
fully. 

“His wife’s terrible upsot. I been searchin’ for 
him since daybreak, but not a hide or hair kin I 
find—nor a soul that seen him. He might of went 
up in a balloon right out of his back yard for all the 
trace he’s left.” 

“What d’ye mistrust?” asked Tubal. 

“You hain’t seen him?” 

“No.” 

“Well, say, don’t make no hullabaloo about it in 
the paper—yit. Mebby everything’s all right.” 

7 



CONTRABAND 


The hunchback laughed, not a long, hearty laugh 
of many haw-haw-haws after the fashion of male 
Gibeon, but one short nasal sound that was almost a 
squawk. 

“Might be,” said Simmy, “he sneaked off to lay 
for one of them rum runners.” 

“What rum runners?” said the hunchback, snap¬ 
ping out the words viciously and fixing his gimlet 
eyes on the boy with an unblinking stare. 

“The ones,” said Simmy, with perfect logic, 
“that's doin’ the rum runnin’.” 

“Hum! . . . Jest dropped in to ask if you seen 
him—and to kind of warn you not to go printin’ 
nothin’ prematurelike. We’ll be gittin’ along, Pee- 
wee and me. . . . Seems mighty funny a man ’u’d 
up and disappear like that, especial the sheriff, with¬ 
out leavin’ no word with me Deputy Jenney al¬ 
lowed his bulk to surge toward the door, and Peewee 
Bangs followed at his heels—a good-natured, dull- 
witted mastiff and an off-breed, heel-snapping, terrier 
mongrel. . . . 

“Well,” said Tubal, “that’s that. I hain’t mislaid 
no pet sheriff.” 

“Mebby,” said Simmy, with bated breath, “them 
miscreants has waylaid him and masa creed him.” 

“Shucks! . . . Say, you been readin’ them dime- 
novel, Jesse James stories ag’in. ... Go wash your 
face.” 

In the distance, echoing from hill to hill and 
careening down the valley, sounded the whistle of a 
locomotive. 


8 


CONTRABAND 


“On time/’ said Tubal. 

“And her cornin’ on it,” said Simmy. 

From that moment neither of them spoke. They 
remained in a sort of state of suspended animation, 
listening for the arrival of the train, awaiting the 
arrival of the new proprietor of the Gibeon Free 
Press. ... Ten minutes later the bus stopped be- 
for the door and a young woman alighted. Two 
pairs of eyes inside the printing office stared at her 
and then turned to meet. 

“ ’Tain’t her,” said Tubal. 

Tubal based his statement upon a preconception 
with which the young lady did not at all agree. She 
was small and very slender. Tubal guessed she was 
eighteen, when, as a matter of fact, she was twenty- 
two. There was about her an air of class, of breed¬ 
ing such as Tubal had noted in certain summer visi¬ 
tors in Gibeon. From head to feet she was dressed 
in white—a tiny white hat upon her chestnut hair, 
a white jacket, a white skirt, not too short, but of 
suitable length for an active young woman, and 
white buckskin shoes. . . . All these points Tubal 
might have admitted in the new owner of the Free 
Press, but when he scrutinized her face, he knew. 
No relative of Old Man Nupley could look like 
that! She was lovely—no less—with the dazzling, 
bewitching loveliness of intelligent youth. She 
was something more than lovely, she was individ¬ 
ual. There was a certain pertness about her nose 
and chin, humor lurked in the corners of her eyes. 
She would think and say interesting things, and it 
2 9 


CONTRABAND 


would be very difficult to frighten her. . . . Tubal 
waggled his head, woman-hater that he was, and 
admitted inwardly that there were points in her 
favor. 

And then—and then she advanced toward the door 
and opened it. 

“This is the office of the Free Press, is it not?” 
she said. 

“Yes ’m. What kin we do for you?” 

“I’m not sure. A great deal, I hope. ... I am 
Carmel Lee—the—the new editor of this paper.” 

In his astonishment Tubal pointed a lean, inky 
finger at the tip of her nose, and poked it at her twice 
before he could speak. “You! . . . You!” he said, 
and then swallowed hard, and felt as if he were un¬ 
pleasantly suspended between heaven and earth with 
nothing to do or say. 

“I,” she answered. 

Tubal swung his head slowly and glared at Simmy, 
evidently laying the blame for this denouement upon 
the boy’s shoulders. 

“Git out of here,” he whispered, hoarsely, “and 
for Gawd’s sake —wash your face.” 

Simmy vanished, and Tubal, praying for succor, 
remained, nonplused, speechless for once. 

“Is that my desk?” asked Miss Lee. “Um! . . .” 
Then she won Tubal’s undying devotion at a single 
stroke. “I presume,” she said, “you are foreman of 
the composing room.” 

He nodded dumbly. 

“You—you look very nice and efficient. I’m glad 

10 


CONTRABAND 


I’m going to have a man like you to help me. . . . 
Is it very hard to run a real newspaper?” 

“IBs easy. You haurt got any idea how easy it is. 
Why, Simmy and me, we done it for two issues, and 
’twan’t no chore to speak of! . . . Where’s that 
Simmy? . . . Hey, Simmy!” 

“He went,” said Miss Lee, “to wash his face. . . . 
Now I think I shall go to the hotel. It’s next door, 
isn’t it? . . . After I have lunch I’ll come back, and 
we’ll go to work. You’ll—have to take me in hand, 
won’t you? ... Is this a—a profitable paper?” 

“By gosh! it will be. We’ll make her the dog- 
gonedest paper ’n the state. We’ll-” 

“Thank you said Miss Lee. “Right after lunch 
we’ll start in.” And with that she walked daintily 
out of the office and turned toward the Commercial 
House. . . . Tubal gave a great sigh and leaned 
on the office railing. 

“Has she gone?” came a whisper from the shop. 

“You come here. Git in here where I kin talk 
to you.” 

“Here I be. . . . Say, when do we quit?” 

“Quit? Quit what?” 

“Our jobs. We was goin’ to. You ’n’ me won’t 
work for no woman?” 

“Who said so? Who said anythin’ about quittin’, 
I’d like to know. Not me. . . . And say, if I ketch 
you tryin’ to quit, I’ll skin you alive. ... You ’n’ 
me, we got to stick by that leetle gal, we have. . . . 
Foreman of the composin’ room! ... By jing! 
. . . Perty as a picture. . . . By jing!” 

11 



CONTRABAND 


“Say, you gone crazy, or what?” 

“She’s a-comin’ back right after lunch. Git to 
work, you. Git this office cleaned up and swept up 
and dusted up. . . . Think she kin work amongst 
this filth. ... Git a mop and a pail. We’ll fix up 
this hole so’s she kin eat off’n the floor if she takes 
a notion. . . . Simmy, she’s goin’ to stay and run 
this here paper. That cunnin’ leetle gal’s goin’ to be 
our boss. . . . Goddlemighty! . . . 


CHAPTER II 


/^ARMEL LEE had been told by everybody, ever 
since she could remember being told anything, 
that she was headstrong and impulsive. Her parents 
had impressed it upon her and, rather proudly, had 
disseminated the fact among the neighbors until it 
became a tradition in the little Michigan town where 
she was born. People held the idea that one must 
make allowances for Carmel and be perpetually ready 
to look with tolerance on outbursts of impulse. Her 
teachers had accepted the tradition and were accus¬ 
tomed to advise with her upon the point. The repu* 
tation accompanied her to the university, and only 
a few weeks before, upon her graduation, the head 
of the Department of Rhetoric (which included a 
course in journalism) spent an entire valuable hour 
beseeching her to curb her willfulness and to count 
as high as fifty before she reached a decision. 

So Carmel, after being the victim of such propa¬ 
ganda for sixteen or seventeen years, could not be 
censured if she believed it herself. She had gotten 
to be rather afraid of Carmel and of what Carmel 
might do unexpectedly. Circumspection and repres¬ 
sion had become her watchwords, and the present 
business of her life was to look before she leaped. 
She had made a vow of deliberation. As soon as she 

13 


CONTRABAND 


found herself wanting to do something she became 
suspicious of it; and latterly, with grim determina¬ 
tion, she had taken herself in hand. Whenever she 
became aware of a desire to act, she compelled her¬ 
self to sit down and think it over. Not that this did 
a great deal of good, but it gave her a very pleasing 
sensation of self-mastery. As a matter of fact, she 
was not at all introspective. She had taken the word 
of bystanders for her impulsiveness; it was no dis¬ 
covery of her own. And now that she was school¬ 
ing herself in repression, she did not perceive in the 
least that she failed to repress. When she wanted 
to do a thing, she usually did it. The deliberation 
only postponed the event. When she forced herself 
to pause and scrutinize a desire, she merely paused 
and scrutinized it—and then went ahead and did 
what she desired. 

It may be considered peculiar that a girl who had 
inherited a newspaper, as Carmel had done, should 
have paid so cursory a first visit. It would have been 
natural to rush into the shop with enthusiasm and 
to poke into corners and to ransack the place from 
end to end, and to discover exactly what it was she 
had become owner of. However, Carmel merely 
dropped in and hurried away. . . . This was re¬ 
pression. It was a distinct victory over impulse. 
She wanted to do it very much, so she compelled 
herself to turn her back and to go staidly to lunch 
at the hotel. 

She ate very little and was totally unaware of the 
sensation she created in the dining room, especially 

14 


CONTRABAND 


over at the square table which was regarded as the 
property of visiting commercial travelers. It was 
her belief that she gave off an impression of dignity 
such as befitted an editor, and that a stern, business¬ 
like air sat upon her so that none could mistake the 
fact that she was a woman of affairs. Truthfulness 
compels it to be recorded that she did not give this 
impression at all, but quite another one. She looked 
a lovely schoolgirl about to go canoeing with a box 
of bonbons on her lap. The commercial travelers 
who were so unfortunate as to be seated with their 
back toward her acquired cricks in their necks. 

After dinner (in a day or two she would learn 
not to refer to it as luncheon) she compelled herself 
to go up to her room and to remain there for a full 
fifteen minutes. After this exercise, so beneficial to 
her will, she descended and walked very slowly to 
the office of the Free Press. Having thus given free 
rein to her bent for repression, she became herself 
and pounced . She pounced upon the office; she 
pounced upon the shop. She made friends with the 
cylinder press much as an ordinary individual would 
make friends with a nice dog, and she talked to the 
little job press as to a kitten and became greatly ex¬ 
cited over the great blade of the paper cutter, and 
wanted Tubal to give her an instant lesson in the 
art of sticking type. For two hours she played with 
things. Then, of a sudden, it occurred to her to 
wonder if a living could be made out of the outfit. 

It was essential that the paper should provide her 
with a living, and that it should go about the business 

15 


CONTRABAND 


of doing so almost instantly. At the moment when 
Carmel first set foot in Gibeon she was alone in the 
world. Old Man Nupley had been her last remain¬ 
ing relative. And—what was even more productive 
of unease of mind—she was the owner of exactly 
seventy-two dollars and sixteen cents! 

Therefore she pounced upon the records of the 
concern and very quickly discovered that Old Man 
Nupley had left her no placer mine out of which she 
could wash a pan of gold before breakfast. She had, 
she found, become the owner of the right to pay 
off a number of pressing debts. The plant was 
mortgaged. It owed for paper; there were install¬ 
ments due on the job press; there were bills for this, 
that, and the other thing which amounted to a 
staggering total. . . . 

She was not daunted, however, until she examined 
the credit side of the affair. The year had brought 
the Free Press a grand total of five hundred and 
sixty-one paid subscriptions; the advertising, at the 
absurd rate of fifteen cents an inch, had been what 
politicians call scattering; and the job work had 
hardly paid for the trouble of keeping the dust off 
the press. The paper was dead on its feet, as so 
many rural weeklies are. She could not help think¬ 
ing that h*er uncle Nupley had died in the nick of 
time to avoid bankruptcy. 

It is worth recording that Carmel did not weep a 
tear of disappointment, nor feel an impulse to walk 
out of the place and go the thousand miles back to 
Michigan to take the job of teaching English in the 

16 


CONTRABAND 


home high school. No. The only emotion Carmel 
felt was anger. Her eyes actually glinted, and a 
red spot made its appearance upon each cheek. She 
had arrived in Gibeon with a glowing illusion packed 
in her trunk; unkind fact had snatched it away and 
replaced it with clammy reality. 

She got up from her desk and walked into the shop, 
where Tubal was pretending to be busy. 

“Gibeon is the county seat, isn’t it?” she asked. 

“Yes’m ” 

“How many people live here?” 

“We claim two thousand. 01’ Man Nupley al¬ 
lowed the’ was four thousand in the township.” 

“Then” (her manner put Tubal in the wrong at 
once and compelled him to fumble about for a de¬ 
fense) “why have we only a little more than five 
hundred subscribers?” 

“Wa-al, one thing or another, seems as though. 
Folks never took to this paper much. . . . Mostly 
they take in the Standard from over to Litchfield.” 

“Why?” 

Tubal shifted the blame to Gibeon. “Seems like 
this hain’t much of a town. . . . It’s a dum funny 
town. I guess folks didn’t set much store by this 
paper on account of Abner Fownes.” 

“Abner Fownes? Who is he, and what has he 
to do with it?” 

“Abner,” said Tubal, “comes dost to bein’ a one- 
man band. Uh huh! . . . Owns the saw mills, owns 
half of Main Street, owns the Congo church and the 
circuit judge and the selectmen, and kind of claims 

17 


CONTRABAND 


to own all the folks that lives here. . . „ 01* Man 
Nupley was a kind of errand boy of his’n.” 

Carmel’s intuition carried her to the point. “And 
the people didn’t take this paper because they didn’t 
trust it. That was it, wasn’t it—because this Abner 
Fownes—owned Uncle Nupley.” 

“I calc’late,” said Tubal, “you’re twittin’ on facts. 
. . He chuckled. “Las’ fall the folks kind of riz 
ag’in’ Abner and dum nigh trompled on him at 
election time. Yes, sir. Made a fight fer it, but 
they didn’t elect nobody but one sheriff. Good man, 
too. . . . But Abner was too slick for ’em and he 
run off with all the other offices. . . . He holds a 
chattel mortgage onto this plant.” 

“Is he a bad man?” 

“Wa-al I dunno’s a feller could call him bad. 
Jest pig-headed, like, and got the idee nobody knows 
nothin’ but him. My notion is he gits bamboozled 
a lot. The Court House crowd tickles his ribs and 
makes him work for ’em. No, he hain’t bad. 
Deacon, and all that.” 

“The local politicians flatter him and make use of 
the power his money gives him, is that it!?” 

“You hit the nail plumb on the head.” 

“Who is the real boss ?” 

“Wa-al now, that’s kind of hard to say. Kind of 
a ring. Half a dozen of ’em. Calc’late Supervisor 
Delorme is close to bein’ the queen bee.” 

She could visualize Abner Fownes, smug, fatuous, 
in a place of power which he did not know how to 
use, a figurehead and cat’s-paw for abler and wickeder 

18 


CONTRABAND 


men. ... It must be confessed that her interest in 
him was not civic, but personal. He was, at that 
moment, of no importance to her except as the man 
who held a chattel mortgage on her plant and whose 
influence over her uncle had withered the possible 
prosperity of the paper. 

She was saying to herself : “I've got to find a way. 
I’ve got to make a success of this. I can’t go back 
home and admit I couldn’t do it. . . . Everybody 
said I couldn’t run a paper. But I can. I can.” 

The field was there, a prosperous town with a 
cultivated countryside to the south and rich forest 
lands to north and west. There was a sufficient 
population to support well a weekly paper; there was 
all of Main Street, two dozen merchants large and 
small, whose advertising patronage should flow in 
to the Free Press. 

“What it needs,” she told herself, “is somebody 
to get behind and push.” 

As a matter of fact she was convinced the failure 
of the paper was not due to Abner Fownes, nor to 
politics or outside influences, but to the lack of 
initiative and ability of her uncle. So much of the 
town as she had seen was rather pleasing; it had no 
appearance of resting over subterranean caverns of 
evil, nor had the men and women she saw on the 
streets the appearance of being ground down by one 
man’s wealth, or of smarting under the rule of an 
evil political ring. On the contrary, it seemed an 
ordinary town, full of ordinary people, who lived 
ordinary lives in reasonable happiness. She dis- 


CONTRABAND 


counted Tubal’s disclosures and jumped to a con¬ 
clusion. No, she told herself, if she proved adequate, 
there was no reason why she could not succeed where 
Uncle Nupley failed. 

The telephone interrupted her reflections and she 
lifted the receiver. 

“Is this the Free Press?” asked a voice. 

‘‘Yes.” 

“Wait a moment, please.” 

After some delay another voice, a large, important 
voice, repeated the question, and Carmel admitted 
a second time the identity of the paper. 

“This,” said the voice, evidently impressed by the 
revelation it was making, “is Abner Fownes.” 

“Yes,” said Carmel. 

“Are you the young woman—Nupley’s niece?” 

“I am.” 

“Will you step over to my office at once, then. I 
want to see you?” 

Carmel’s eyes twinkled and her brows lifted. 
“Abner Fownes,” she said. “The name has a mas¬ 
culine sound. Your voice is—distinctly masculine ?” 

“Eh? . . . What of it?” 

“Why,” said Carmel, “the little book I studied in 
school says that when a gentleman wishes to see a 
lady he goes to her. I fear I should be thought 
forward if I called on you.” 

“Not at all. . . . Not at all,” said the voice, and 
Carmel knew she had to deal with a man in whom 
resided no laughter. 

“I shall be glad to see you whenever you find it 

20 


CONTRABAND 

convenient to call/' she said—and hung up the 
receiver. 

As she turned about she saw a young man stand¬ 
ing outside the railing, a medium-sized young man 
who wore his shoulders slightly rounded and spec¬ 
tacles of the largest and most glittering variety. The 
collar of his coat asked loudly to be brushed and his 
tie had the appearance of having been tied with one 
hand in a dark bedroom. He removed his hat and 
displayed a head of extraordinarily fine formation. 
It was difficult to tell if he were handsome, because 
the rims of his spectacles masked so much of his 
face and because his expression was one of gloomy 
wrath. Carmel was tempted to laugh at the expres¬ 
sion because it did not fit; it gave the impression of 
being a left-over expression, purchased at a reduc¬ 
tion, and a trifle large for its wearer. 

“May I ask,” he said, in a voice exactly suited 
to his stilted diction, “if you are in charge of this— 
er—publication ?” 

“I am,” said Carmel. 

“I wish,” said the young man, “to address a com¬ 
munication to the citizens of this village through the 
—er—medium of your columns.” 

So this, thought Carmel, was the sort of person 
who wrote letters to newspapers. She had often 
wondered what the species looked like. 

“On what subject?” she asked. 

“Myself,” said he. 

“It should be an interesting letter,” Carmel said, 
mischievously. 


21 


CONTRABAND 


The young man lowered his head a trifle and peered 
at her over the rims of his glasses. He pursed his 
mouth and wrinkled one cheek, studying her as a 
naturalist might scrutinize some interesting, but not 
altogether comprehensible, bug. Evidently he could 
not make up his mind as to her classification. 

“I fancy it will be found so,” he said. 

“May I ask your name ?” 

He fumbled in an inner pocket and continued to 
fumble until it became an exploration. He produced 
numerous articles and laid them methodically upon 
the railing—a fountain pen, dripping slightly, half 
a dozen letters, a large harmonica, a pocket edition of 
Plato’s Republic, a notebook, several pencils, and a 
single glove. He stared at the glove with recognition 
and nodded to it meaningly, as much as to say: 
“Ah, there you are again. . . . Hiding as usual.” 
At last he extracted a leather wallet and from the 
wallet produced a card which he extended toward 
Carmel. 

Before she read it she had a feeling there would 
be numerous letters upon it, and she was not dis¬ 
appointed. It said: 

Evan Bartholomew Pell, A.B., Ph.D., LL.D., 
A.M. 

“Ah!” said Carmel. 

“Yes,” said the young man with some complacency. 

“And your letter.” 

“I am,” he said, “or, more correctly, I was, 
superintendent of schools in this village. There 
are, as you know, three schools only one of 

22 


CONTRABAND 

which gives instruction in the so-called high-school 
branches.” 

“Indeed,” said Carmel. 

“I have been removed,” he said, and stared at her 
with lips compressed. When she failed to live up 
to his expectations in her manifestations of con¬ 
sternation, he repeated his statement. “I have been 
removed,” he said, more emphatically. 

“Removed,” said Carmel. 

“Removed. Unj ustly and unwarrantably removed. 
Autocratically and tyrannically removed. I am a 
victim of nepotism. I have, I fancy, proven ade¬ 
quate ; indeed, I may say it is rare to find a man of 
my attainments in so insignificant a position. . . . 
But I have been cast out upon the streets arbitrarily, 
that a corrupt and self-seeking group of professional 
politicians may curry favor with a man more corrupt 
than themselves. In short and in colloquial terms, I 
have been kicked out to provide a place for Super¬ 
visor Delmore’s cousin.” 

Carmel nodded. “And you wish to protest.” 

“I desire to lay before the public my ideas of the 
obligation of the public toward its children in the 
matter of education. I desire to protest against 
glaring injustice. I desire to accuse a group of men 
willing to prostitute the schools to the level of po¬ 
litical spoils. I wish to protest at being set adrift 
penniless.” 

His expression as he uttered the word “penniless” 
was one of helpless bewilderment which touched 
Carmel’s sympathy. 


23 


CONTRABAND 


“Penniless?” she said. 

“I am no spendthrift,” he said, severely. “I may 
say that I am exceedingly economical. But I have 
invested my savings, and—er—returns have failed 
to materialize from the investment.” 

“What investment?” 

The young man eyed her a moment as if he felt 
her to be intruding unwarrantably in his private con¬ 
cerns, but presently determined to reply. 

“A certain gold mine, whose location I cannot re¬ 
member at the moment. It was described as of 
fabulous wealth, and I was assured the return from 
my investment of five hundred dollars would lift me 
above the sordid necessity of working for wages. 

. . . I regret to say that hitherto there has been no 
material assurance of the truth of the statements 
made to me.” 

“Poor lamb!” said Carmel under her breath. 

“I beg your pardon?” 

Carmel shook her head. “So you are—out of a 
job—and broke ?” she said. 

“Broke,” he said, lugubriously, “is an exceedingly 
expressive term.” 

“And what shall you do?” 

He looked about him, at his feet, through the 
door into the shop, under the desk, at the picture on 
the wall in a helpless, bewildered way as if he thought 
his future course of action might be hiding some 
place in the neighborhood. 

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” he said. 

Carmel considered. Inexperienced as she was, 

24 


CONTRABAND 


new to the intrigues of Gibeon, she was able to per¬ 
ceive how the professor’s letter was loaded with 
dynamite—not for him, but for the paper which 
published it. Notwithstanding, it was her impulse 
to print it. Indeed, her mind was firmly made up 
to print it. Therefore she assumed an attitude of 
deliberation, as she had schooled herself to do. 

“If you give me the letter,” he said, “I will read 
it and consider the wisdom of making it public.” 

“I shall be obliged to you,” he said, and turned 
toward the door. Midway he paused. “If,” he 
said, “you chance to hear of a position—as teacher 
or otherwise—to which I may be adapted, I shall 
be glad to have you communicate with me.” 

He moved again toward the door, opened it, paused 
again, and turned full to face Carmel. Then he 
made a statement sharply detached from the context, 
and astonishing not so much for the fact it stated as 
because of the man who stated it, his possible reasons 
for making the statement, and the abruptness of the 
change of subject matter. 

“Sheriff Churchill has disappeared,” he said. Hav¬ 
ing made the statement, he shut the door after him 
and walked rapidly up the street. 

3 


CHAPTER III 


C ARMEL more than half expected Abner Fownes 
to appear in the office, but he did not appear. 
Indeed, it was some days before she caught so much 
as a casual glimpse of him on the street. But she 
was gathering information about him and about 
the town of Gibeon and the county of which it was 
the center. Being young, with enthusiasm and ideals, 
and a belief in the general virtue of the human race, 
she was not pleased. 

She set about it to study Gibeon as she would 
have studied some new language, commencing with 
elementals, learning a few nouns and verbs and the 
local rules of the grammar of life. She felt she 
must know Gibeon as she knew the palm of her 
hand, if she were to coax the Free Press out of the 
slough into which it had slipped. 

But it was not easy to know Gibeon, for Gibeon 
did not know itself. Like so many of our American 
villages, it was not introspective—even at election 
time. The tariff and the wool schedule and Wall 
Street received from it more attention than did keep¬ 
ing its own doorstep clean. It was used to its 
condition, and viewed it as normal. There were 
moments of excited interest and hot-blooded talk. 
Always there was an undercurrent of rumor; but it 

26 


CONTRABAND 


seemed to Carmel the town felt a certain pride in 
the iniquity of its politics. A frightful inertia re¬ 
sides in the mass of mankind, and because of this 
inertia tsars and princes and nobilities and Tammany 
Societies and bosses and lobbies and pork barrels 
and the supreme tyranny of war have existed since 
men first invented organization. . . . Sometimes it 
seems the world’s supply of energy is cornered by the 
ill-disposed. Rotten governments and administra¬ 
tions are tolerated by the people because they save the 
people the trouble of establishing and conducting 
something better. 

In a few days Carmel perceived a great deal that 
was going on in Gibeon, and understood a little of 
it, and, seeing and understanding as she did, an 
ambition was born in her, the ambition to wake up 
Gibeon. This ambition she expressed to Tubal, who 
listened and waggled his head. 

“One time,” he said, “I worked fer a reform news¬ 
paper—till it went into bankruptcy.” 

“But look-” 

“I been lookin’ a sight longer ’n’ you have, Lady.” 
At first he had called her Lady as a dignified and 
polite form of greeting. After that it became 
a sort of title of affection, which spread from 
Tubal to Gibeon. “I been lookin’ and seein’, 
and what I see is that they’s jest one thing 
folks is real int’rested in, and that’s earnin’ a 
livin’.” 

“I don’t believe it, Tubal. I believe people want 
to do right. I believe everybody would rather do 

27 



CONTRABAND 

right and be good—if some one would just show 
them how.” 

“Mebby, but you better let somebody else take the 
pointer and go to the blackboard. You got to eat 
three times a day, Lady, and this here paper’s got 
to step up and feed you. Look at it reasonable. 
What d’ye git by stirrin’ things up? Why, half a 
dozen real good folks claps their hands, but they 
don’t give up a cent. What d’ye git if you keep 
your hands off and let things slide? You git the 
county printin’, and consid’able advertisin’ and job 
work that Abner Fownes kin throw to you. You 
git allowed to eat. And there you be. . . . Take 
that letter of the perfessor’s, fer instance-” 

“I’m going to print that letter if—if I starve.” 

“Which is what the perfessor’s doin’ right now. 
. . . And where’s Sheriff Churchill? Eh? Tell 
me that.” 

“Tubal, what is this about the sheriff? Has he 
really disappeared?” 

“If you don’t b’lieve it, go ask his wife. The 
Court House crowd lets on he’s run off with a 
woman or mebby stole some county funds. They 
would. . . . But what woman? The’ wa’n’t no 
woman. And Churchill wa’n’t the stealin’ kind.” 

“What do you think, Tubal?” 

“Lady, I don’t even dast to think.” 

“What will be done?” 

“Nothin’.” 

“You mean the sheriff of a county can disappear— 
and nothing be done about it?” 

28 



CONTRABAND 


“He kin in Gibeon. Oh, you keep your eye peeled. 
Delorme and Fownes ’ll smooth it over somehow, 
and the folks kind of likes it. Gives ’em suthin’ to 
talk about. Sure. When the’ hain’t no other topic 
they’ll fetch up the sheriff and argue about what 
become of him. But nobody ’ll ever know—for 
sure.” 

“I’m going to see Mrs. Churchill,” said Carmel, 
with sudden determination. “It’s news. It’s the 
biggest news we’ll have for a long time.” 

“H’m! ... I dunno. Deputy Jenney and Pee- 
wee Bangs they dropped in here a few days back 
and give me a tip to lay off the sheriff. Anyhow, 
everybody knows he’s gone.” 

Carmel made no reply. She reached for her hat, 
put it on at the desirable angle, and went out of the 
door. Tubal stared after her a moment, fired an 
accurate salvo at a nail head in the floor, and walked 
back into the shop with the air of a man proceeding 
to face a firing squad. 

Carmel walked rapidly up Main Street past the 
Busy Big Store and Smith Brothers’ grocery and 
Miss Gammidge’s millinery shop, rounding the cor¬ 
ner on which was Field & Hopper’s bank. She cut 
diagonally across the Square, past the town pump, 
and proceeded to the little house next the Rink. The 
Rink had been erected some twenty-five years before 
during the roller-skating epidemic, but was now 
utilized as a manufactory of stepladders and plant 
stands and kitchen chairs combined in one article. 
This handy device was the invention of Pazzy Hen- 

29 


CONTRABAND 


dee, whose avocation was inventing, but whose oc¬ 
cupation was constructing models of full-rigged 
ships. It was in the little house, square, with a man¬ 
sard roof, that Sheriff Churchill’s family resided. 
Carmel rang the bell. 

“Come in,” called a woman’s voice. 

Carmel hesitated, not knowing this was Gibeon’s 
hospitable custom—that one had but to rap on a 
door to be invited to enter. 

“Come in,” said the voice after a pause, and 
Carmel obeyed. 

“Right in the parlor,” the voice directed. 

Carmel turned through the folding doors to the 
right, and there, on the haircloth sofa, sat a stout, 
motherly woman in state. She wore her black silk 
with the air common to Gibeon when it wears its 
black silk. It was evident Mrs. Churchill had laid 
aside her household concerns in deference to the 
event, and, according to precedent, awaited the visits 
of condolence and curiosity of which it was the duty, 
as well as the pleasure, of her neighbors to pay. 

“Find a chair and set,” said Mrs. Churchill, scruti¬ 
nizing Carmel. “You’re the young woman that Nup- 
ley left the paper to, hain’t you?” 

“Yes,” said Carmel, “and I’ve come to ask about 
your husband—if the subject isn’t too painful.” 

“Painful! Laws! ’Twouldn’t matter how pain¬ 
ful ’twas. Folks is entitled to know, hain’t they? 
Him bein’ a public character. Was you thinkin’ of 
havin’ a piece in the paper?” 

“If you will permit,” said Carmel. 

30 


CONTRABAND 


In spite of the attitude of state, in spite of some¬ 
thing very like pride in being a center of interest 
and a dispenser of news, Carmel liked Mrs. Church¬ 
ill. Her face was the face of a woman who had 
been a faithful helpmeet to her husband; of a woman 
who would be summoned by neighbors in illness or 
distress. Motherliness, greatness of heart, were 
written on those large features; and a fine kindli¬ 
ness, clouded by present sorrow, shone in her wise 
eyes. Carmel had encountered women of like mold. 
No village in America but is the better, more livable, 
for the presence and ready helpfulness of this splen¬ 
did sisterhood. 

“Please tell me about it,” said Carmel. 

“It was like this,” said Mrs. Churchill, taking on 
the air of a narrator of important events. The 
sheriff and me was sittin’ on the porch, talkin’ as 
pleasant as could be and nothin’ to give a body 
warnin’. We was kind of arguin’ like about my 
oldest’s shoes and the way he runs through a pair in 
less ’n a month. The sheriff he was holdin’ it was 
right and proper boys should wear out shoes, and 
I was sayin’ it was a sin and a shame sich poor 
leather was got off on the public. Well, just there 
the sheriff he got up and says he was goin’ to pump 
himself a cold drink, and he went into the house, 
and I could hear the pump squeakin’, but no thought 
of anythin’. He didn’t come back, and he didn’t come 
back, so I got up, thinkin’ to myself, what in tunket’s 
he up to now and kind of wonderin’ if mebby he’d 
fell in a fit or suthin’.” Carmel took note that Mrs. 

31 


CONTRABAND 


Churchill talked without the air of punctuation 
marks. “I went out to the back door and looked, 
and the’ wa’n’t hide or hair of him in sight. I 
hollered, but he didn’t answer. ...” Mrs. Church¬ 
ill closed her eyes and two great tears oozed between 
the tightly shut lids and poised on the uplands of 
her chubby cheeks. “And that’s all I know,” she 
said in a dull voice. “He hain’t never come back.” 

“Have you any idea why he disappeared?” 

“I got my idees. My husband was a man sot in 
his ways—not but what I could manage him when 
he needed managin’, and a better or more generous 
provider never drew the breath of life. But he 
calc’lated to do his duty. I guess he done it too 
well!” 

“What do you mean, Mrs. Churchill ?” 

“The sheriff was an honest man. When the folks 
elected him they chose him because he was honest 
and nobody couldn’t move him out of a path he set 
his foot to travel. He was close mouthed, too, but 
I seen for weeks past he had suthin’ on his mind that 
he wouldn’t come out with. He says to me once, 
‘If folks knew what they was livin’ right next door 
to!’ He didn’t say no more, but that was a lot for 
him. . . Suddenly her eyes glinted and her lips 
compressed. “My husband was done away with,” 
she said, “because he was a good man and a smart 
man, and I’m prayin’ to God to send down vengeance 
on them that done it.” 

She paused a moment and her face took on the 
grimness of righteous anger. “It’s reported to me 

32 


CONTRABAND 


they're settin’ afoot rumors that he run off with some 
baggage—him that couldn’t bear me out of sight 
these dozen year; him that Couldn’t git up in the 
mornin’ nor go to bed at night without me there to 
help him! They lie! I know my man and I trust 
him. He didn’t need no woman but me, and I didn’t 
need no man but him. . . . Some says he stole county 
money. They lie, too, and best for them they don’t 
make no sich sayin’s in my hearin’. . . 

“What do you think is at bottom of it all?” 

Mrs. Churchill shook her head. “Some day it ’ll 
all come out,” she said, and her word was an asser¬ 
tion of her faith in the goodness of God. There was 
a pause, and then woman’s heart cried out to woman’s 
heart for sympathy. 

“I try to bear up and to endure it like he’d want 
me to. But it’s lonely, awful lonely. . . . Lookin’ 
ahead at the years to come—without him by me. . . . 
Come nighttime and it seems like I can’t bear it.” 

“But—but he’ll come back,” said Carmel. 

“Back! Child, there hain’t no back from where 
my husband’s gone.” 

Somehow this seemed to Carmel a statement of 
authority. It established the fact. Sheriff Churchill 
would never return, and his wife knew it. Some¬ 
thing had informed her past doubting. It gave Car¬ 
mel a strange, uncanny^sensation, and she sat silent, 
chilled. Then an emotion moved in her, swelled, and 
lifted itself into her throat. It was something more 
than mere anger, it was righteous wrath. 

“Mrs. Churchill,” she said, “if this is true— 

33 


CONTRABAND 


the thing you believe—then there are men in Gibeon 
who are not fit to walk the earth. There is a 
thing here which must be crushed—unearthed and 
crushed.” 

“If it is God’s will.” 

“It must be God’s will. And if I can help—if I 
can do one single small thing to help-” 

“Mebby,” said Mrs. Churchill, solemnly, “He has 
marked you out and set you apart as His instrument.” 

“I want to think. I want to consider.” Carmel 

got to her feet. “I- Oh, this is a wicked, cruel, 

cruel thing! . . .” 

She omitted, in her emotion, any word of parting, 
and walked from the house, eyes shining, lips com¬ 
pressed grimly. In her ears a phrase repeated itself 
again and again— “Mebby He has set you apart 
as His instrument. . . 

On the Square she met Prof. Evan Bartholomew 
Pell, who first peered at her through his great beetle 
glasses and then confronted her. 

“May I ask,” he said, brusquely, “what decision 
you have reached concerning my letter?” 

“I am going to print it,” she said. 

He was about to pass on without amenities of any 
sort whatsoever, but she arrested him. 

“What are your plans?” she asked. 

“I have none,” he said, tartly. 

“No plans and no money?” 

“That is a matter,” he said, “which it does not 
seem to me is of interest to anyone but myself.” 

She smiled, perceiving now he spoke out of a boy- 

34 




CONTRABAND 


ish shame and pride, and perceiving also in his eyes 
an expression of worry and bewilderment which 
demanded her sympathy. 

“No schools are open at this time of year,” she 
said. 

“None. I do not think I shall teach again.” 

“Why?” 

“I don’t like school trustees,” he said, simply, and 
one understood how he regarded the genus school 
trustee as a separate classification of humanity, hav¬ 
ing few qualities in common with the general human 
race. “I—I shall work” he said. 

“At what? What, besides teaching, are you fitted 
to do?” 

“I—I can dig,” he said, looking at her hopefully. 
“Anybody can dig. Men who dig eat—and have a 
place to sleep. What more is there ?” 

“A great deal more. . . . Have you no place to 
eat or sleep?” she said, suddenly. 

“My landlady has set my trunk on the porch, and 
as for food, I breakfasted on berries. . . . They are 
not filling,” he added. 

Carmel considered. In her few short days of 
ownership she had discovered the magnitude of the 
task of rehabilitating the Free Press. She had seen 
how she must be business manager, advertising solici¬ 
tor, and editor, and that any of the three positions 
could well demand all of her time. It would be 
useless to edit a paper, she comprehended, if there 
was no business to support it. Contrariwise, it 
would be impossible to get business for a paper as 

35 


CONTRABAND 

futile as the Free Press was at that moment in its 
history. 

“How,” she said, “would you like to be an editor 
—a kind of an editor?” 

“Td like it,” he said. “Then I could say to the 
public the things Td like to say to the public. You 
can’t educate them. They don’t care. They are 
sunk in a slough of inertia with a rock of ignorance 
around their necks. I would like to tell them how 
thick-headed they are. It would be a satisfaction.” 

“I’m afraid,” said Carmel, “you wouldn’t do for 
an editor.” 

“Why not, I should like to know?” 

“Because,” said Carmel, “you don’t know very 
much.” 

She could see him swell with offended dignity. 
“Good morning,” he said, and turned away without 
lifting his hat. 

“And you have very bad manners,” she added. 

“Eh? . . . What’s that?” 

“Yes. And I imagine you are awfully selfish and 
self-centered. You don’t think about anybody but 
yourself, do you? You—you imagine the universe 
has its center in Prof. Evan Bartholomew Pell, and 
you look down on everybody who hasn’t a lot of 
degrees to string after his name. You don’t like 
people.” She paused and snapped a question at 
him. “How much did they pay you for being 
superintendent of schools?” 

“Fifteen hundred dollars a year,” he said, the an¬ 
swer being surprised out of him. 

36 


CONTRABAND 


“Doesn’t that take down your conceit ?” 

“Conceit! . . . Conceit! . . 

“Yes—a good carpenter earns more than that. 
The world can’t set such a high value on you if it 
pays a mechanic more than it does you.” 

“I told you,” he said, impatiently, “that the world 
is silly and ignorant.” 

“It is you who are silly and ignorant.” 

“You—you have no right to talk to me like this. 
You—you are forward and—and impertinent. I 
never met such a young woman.” 

“It’s for the good of your soul,” she said, “and 
because—because I think I’m going to hire you to 
write editorials and help gather news. Before you 
start in, you’ve got to revise your notions of the 
world—and of yourself. If you don’t like people, 
people won’t like you.” 

Evidently he had been giving scant attention to her 
and plenary consideration to himself. “How much 
will you pay me ?” he asked. 

“There you are! ... I don’t know. Whatever 
I pay you will be more than you are worth.” 

He was thinking about himself again, and think¬ 
ing aloud. 

“I fancy I should like to be an editor,” he said. 
“The profession is not without dignity and scholarly 
qualities-” 

“Scholarly fiddlesticks!” 

Again he paid her no compliment of attention. 
“Why shouldn’t one be selfish? What does it 
matter ? What does anything matter ? Here we are 

37 



CONTRABAND 


in this world, rabbits caught in a trap. We can’t 
escape. We’re here, and the only way to get ‘out 
of the trap is to die. We’re here with the trap 
fastened to our foot, waiting to be killed. That’s 
all. So what does anything matter except to get 
through it somehow. Nobody can do anything. The 
greatest man who ever lived hasn’t done a thing but 
live and die. Selfish? Of course I’m selfish. Noth¬ 
ing interests me but me. I want to stay in the trap 
with as little pain and trouble as I can manage. . . . 
Everything and everybody is futile. . . . Now you 
can let me be an editor or you can go along about 
your business and leave me alone.” 

“You have a sweet philosophy,” she said, cuttingly. 
“If that is all your education has given you, the most 
ignorant scavenger on the city streets is wiser and 
better and more valuable to the world than you. I’m 
ashamed of you.” 

“Scavenger! . . .” His eyes snapped behind his 
beetle glasses and he frowned upon her terribly. 
“Now I’m going to be an editor—the silly kind of 
an editor silly people like. Just to show you I can 
do it better than they can. I’ll write better pieces 
about Farmer Tubbs painting his barn red, and better 
editorials about the potato crop. I’m a better man 
than any of them, with a better brain and a better 
education—and I’ll use my superiority to be a better 
ass than any of them.” 

“Do you know,” she said, “you’ll never amount to 
a row of pins until you really find a desire to be of 
use to the world? If you try to help the world, 

38 


CONTRABAND 


sincerely and honestly, the world finds it out and helps 
you—and loves you. . . . Don’t you want people to 
like you?” 

“No.” 

“Well, when you can come to me and tell me you 
do want people to like you, I’ll have some hopes of 
you. . . . Report at the office at one o’clock. You’re 
hired.” 

She walked away from him- rapidly, and he stood 
peering after her with a lost, bewildered air. “What 
an extraordinary young woman!” he said to himself. 
Carmel seated herself at her desk to think. Her eyes 
glanced downward at the fresh blotter she had put 
in place the day before, and there they paused, for 
upon its surface lay a grimy piece of paper upon 
which was printed with a lead pencil: 

Don’t meddle with Sheriff Churchill or he’ll have company. 

That was all, no signature, nothing but the mes¬ 
sage and the threat. Carmel bit her lip. 

“Tubal,” she called. 

“Yes, Lady.” 

“Who has been in the office—inside the railing?” 

“Hain’t been a soul in this mornin’,” he said— 
“not that I seen.” 

Carmel crumpled the paper and threw it in the 
waste basket. Then she picked up her pen and began 
to write—the story of the disappearance of Sheriff 
Churchill. Without doubt she broke the newspaper 
rule that editorial matter should not be contained in 

39 


CONTRABAND 


a news story, but her anger and determination are 
offered as some excuse for this. She ended the story 
with a paragraph which said: 

‘‘The editor has been warned that she will be sent 
to join Sheriff Churchill if she meddles with his 
disappearance. The Free Press desires to give 
notice now that it will meddle until the whole truth 
is discovered and the criminals brought to justice. 
If murder has been done, the murderers must be 
punished.” 


CHAPTER IV 


W HEN Carmel entered the office next morning 
she found Prof. Evan Bartholomew Pell oc¬ 
cupying her chair. On his face was an expression of 
displeasure. He forgot to arise as she stepped through 
tho gate, but he did point a lead pencil at her 
accusingly. 

“You have made me appear ridiculous,” he said, 
hnd compressed his lips with pedagogical severity. 
“In my letter, which you published in this paper, you 
misspelled the words ‘nefarious’ and ‘nepotist.’ 
What excuse have you to offer?” 

Carmel stared at the young man, nonplused for an 
instant, and then a wave of pity spread over her. 
It was pity for a man who would not admit the 
existence of a forest because he was able to see only 
the individual trees. She wondered what life offered 
to Evan Pell; what rewards it held out to him; what 
promises it made. He was vain, that was clear; he 
was not so much selfish as egotistical, and that must 
have been very painful. He was, she fancied, the 
sort of man to whom correct spelling was of greater 
importance than correct principle—not because of any 
tendency toward lack of principle, but because pedan¬ 
try formed a shell about him, inside which he lived 
the life of a turtle. She smiled as she pictured him 
4 41 


CONTRABAND 


as a spectacled turtle of the snapping variety, and it 
was a long time before that mental caricature was 
erased from her mind. Of one thing she was cer¬ 
tain; it would not do to coddle him. Therefore she 
replied, coolly: “Perhaps, if you would use ordinary 
words which ordinary people can understand, you 
would run less risk of misspelling—and people would 
know what you are trying to talk about.” 

“I used the words which exactly expressed my 
meaning.” 

“You are sitting in my chair,” said Carmel. 

Evan Bartholomew flushed and bit his lips. “I— 
my mind was occupied-” he said. 

“With yourself,” said CarmeL “Have you come 
to work?” 

“That was my intention.” 

“Very well. Please clear off that table and find a 
chair. . . . You may smoke!” 

“I do not use tobacco.” 

She shrugged her shoulders, and again he flushed 
as if he had been detected in something mildly shame¬ 
ful. “I am wondering,” she said, “how you can be 
of use.” 

“I can at least see to it that simple words are 
correctly spelled in this paper,” he said. 

“So can Tubal, given time and a dictionary. . . . 
What have you done all your life ? What experience 
have you had?” 

He cleared his throat. “I entered the university at 
the age of sixteen,” he said, “by special dispensation.” 

“An infant prodigy,” she interrupted. “I've often 

42 



CONTRABAND 


read about these boys who enter college when they 
should be playing marbles, and I’ve always wondered 
what became of them.” 

“I have always been informed,” he said, severely, 
“that I was an exceptionally brilliant child. . . . 
Since I entered college and until I came here a j^ear 
ago I have been endeavoring to educate myself 
adequately. Before I was twenty I received both 
LL.B. and A.B. Subsequently I took my master’s 
degree. I have also worked for my D.C.L., my 
Ph.D. . . .” 

She interrupted again. “With what end in view ?” 
she asked. 

“End? . . He frowned at her through his spec¬ 
tacles. “You mean what was my purpose ?” 

“Yes. Were you fitting yourself for any par¬ 
ticular work?” 

“No.” 

“Merely piling up knowledge for the sake of piling 
up knowledge.” 

“You speak,” he said, “as if you were repre¬ 
hensible.” 

She made no direct reply, but asked his age. 

“Twenty-six,” he said. 

“Nine years of which you have spent in doing 
nothing but study; cramming yourself with learn¬ 
ing. . . . What in the world were you going to do 
with all of it ?” 

“That,” he said, “is a matter I have had little time 
to consider.” 

“Did you make any friends in college ?” 

43 



CONTRABAND 


“I had no time-” 

“Of course not. Sanscrit is more important than 
friends. I understand. A friend might have dropped 
in of an evening and interrupted your studies.” 

“Exactly,” he said. 

“Of course you did not go in for athletics.” 

“Exercise,” he said, “scientifically taken, is essen¬ 
tial to a clear mind. I exercise regularly morning 
and evening. If you are asking whether I allowed 
myself to be pummeled and trampled into the mud 
at football, or if I played any other futile game, I 
did not.” 

“So you know almost everything there is to be 
known about books, but nothing about human 
beings.” 

“I fancy I know a great deal about human beings.” 

“Mr. Pell,” she said, becoming more determined 
to crush in the walls of his ego, “I’ve a mind to tell 
you exactly what I think of you.” 

For an instant his eyes twinkled; Carmel was al¬ 
most sure of the twinkle and it quite nonplused her. 
But Evan’s expression remained grave, aloof, a trifle 
patronizing. “I understood I was coming here to— 
work.” 

“You are.” 

“Then,” said he, “suppose we give over this dis¬ 
cussion of myself and commence working.” 

How Carmel might have responded to this impact 
must remain a matter for debate, because she had not 
quite rallied to the attack when the arrival of a 
third person made continuance impossible. There 

44 



CONTRABAND 


are people who just come; others who arrive. The 
first class make no event of it whatever; there is a 
moment when they are not present and an adjoining 
moment when they are—and that is all there is to 
it. The newcomer was an arrival. His manner was 
that of an arrival and resembled somewhat the dock¬ 
ing of an ocean liner. Carmel could imagine little 
tugs snorting and coughing and churning about him 
as he warped into position before the railing. It 
seemed neither right nor possible that he achieved 
the maneuver under his own power alone. His face, 
as Carmel mentally decapitated him, and scrutinized 
that portion of his anatomy separately from the 
whole, gave no impression of any sort of power 
whatever. It was a huge putty-mask of placid vanity. 
There was a greal deal of head, bald and brightly 
glistening; there was an enormous expanse of face 
in which the eyes and nose seemed to have been 
crowded in upon themselves by aggressive flesh; there 
were chins, which seemed not so much physical part 
of the face as some strange festoons hung under the 
chin proper as barbaric adornments. On the Vhole, 
Carmel thought, it was the most face she had evet\* 
seen on one human being. 

She replaced his head and considered him as a 
whole. It is difficult to conceive of the word dapper 
as applying to a mastodon, but here it applied per¬ 
fectly. His body began at his ears, the neck having 
long since retired from view in discouragement. He 
ended in tiny feet dressed in patent-leather ties. Be¬ 
tween ears and toes was merely expanse, immensity, 


CONTRABAND 


a bubble of human flesh. One thought of a pan of 
bread dough which had been the recipient of too 
much yeast. . . . The only dimension in which he 
was lacking was height, which was just, for even 
prodigal nature cannot bestow everything. 

He peered at Carmel, then at Evan Bartholomew 
Pell, with an unwinking baby stare, and then spoke 
suddenly, yet carefully, as if he were afraid his voice 
might somehow start an avalanche of his flesh. 

“I am Abner Fownes,” he said in a soft, effeminate 
voice. 

“I am Carmel Lee,” she answered. 

“Yes. . . . Yes. ... I took that for granted— 
for granted. I have come to see you—here I am. 
Mountain come to Mohammed—eh? . . .” He 
paused to chuckle. “Very uppity young woman. 
Wouldn’t come when I sent for you—so had to come 
to you. What’s he doing here?” he asked, pointing 
a sudden, pudgy finger at Evan Pell. 

“Mr. Pell is working for the paper.” 

“Writing more letters?” He did not pause for an 
answer. “Mistake, grave mistake—printing letters 
like that. Quiet, friendly town—Gibeon. Everybody 
friends here. . . . Stir up trouble. It hurt me.” 

Carmel saw no reason to reply. 

“Came to advise you. Friendly advice. . . . I’m 
interested in this paper—er—from the viewpoint of 
a citizen and—er—financially. Start right, Miss Lee. 
Start right. Catch more flies with honey than with 
vinegar. .. . . You commenced with vinegar. No¬ 
body likes it. Can’t make a living with vinegar. To 

46 


CONTRABAND 


run a paper in Gibeon you must be diplomatic—dip¬ 
lomatic. Can’t expect me to support financially a 
paper which isn’t diplomatic, can you? Now can 
you?” 

“What do you mean by being diplomatic?” 

“Why—er taking advice—yes, taking advice.” 

“From whom?” 

His little eyes opened round as if in great aston¬ 
ishment. 

“From me,” he said. “People in Gibeon—er— 
repose great confidence in my judgment. Great 
confidence.” 

“What sort of advice?” 

“All sorts,” he said, “but principally about what 
you print about different things. . . . Now, I should 
have advised you against printing this young man’s 
letter.” 

“Would you have advised me against printing any¬ 
thing about the threatening note I found on my 
desk?” 

“Ah—sense of humor, miss. Boyish prank. . . . 
Jokers in Gibeon. Town’s full of ’em. . . . Best- 
natured folks in the world, but they love to joke and 
to talk. Love to talk better than to joke. Um! . . . 
Mountains out of molehills—that’s Gibeon’s specialty. 
Mean no harm, Lord love you, not a particle—but 
they’ll tell you anything. Not lying—exactly. Just 
talk.” 

“Is Sheriff Churchill’s disappearance just talk?” 

“Um! , . . Sheriff Churchill—to be sure. Dis¬ 
appeared. Um! . . . Gabble, gabble, gabble.” 

4 7 


CONTRABAND 


“Talk of murder is not gabble,” said Carmel. 

“Ugly word. . . . Shouldn’t use it. Makes me 
shiver.” He shivered like a gelatin dessert. “For¬ 
get such talk. My advice—straight from the heart. 
. . . Stirs things up—things best forgot. Best let 
rest for the sake of wife and children. . . . Paper 
can’t live here without my support. Can’t be done. 
Can’t conscientiously support a paper that stirs up 
things.” 

“Is that a threat, Mr. Fownes.” 

“Goodness, no! Gracious, no! Just want to help. 
. . . Kind heart, Miss Lee. Always think of me as 
a kind heart. Love to do things for folks. . . . 
Love to do things for you ” 

“Thank you, Mr. Fownes. You hold a chattel 
mortgage on this plant.” 

“Don’t think of it. Not a breath of worry— 
cancel it if you say so—cancel it this minute.” 

“In consideration of what?” 

“Why—you put it so sharplike, so direct. I 
wasn’t thinking of consideration. Just being friendly 
and helpful. . . . Public-spirited gift to Gibeon. 
Newspaper a wonderful benefit to a town—the right 
kind of a newspaper.” 

“That’s it, of course. The right kind of a news¬ 
paper. 

“Naturally you wouldn’t make so munificent a 
gift to the wrong kind of newspaper. Is this the 
right kind?” 

“It always has been,” said Mr. Fownes. 

“What made it the right kind?” 

48 


CONTRABAND 


“Your uncle—the former proprietor—relied on my 
advice. Consulted with me daily. . . . During many 
years his paper made few mistakes. ,, 

“So, if I consult with you—daily—and act upon 
your advice, Tm sure to have the right kind of a 
paper, too? . . . And in that case you would cancel 
the chattel mortgage ?” 

“To be sure—exactly.” 

“But if, on the contrary, I should decide to run 
this paper myself, as I see fit, without taking advice 
from anybody, and printing what I think should be 
printed?” 

Mr. Fownes pondered this briefly. “Then,” he 
said, “I should have to wait—and determine how 
sound your judgment is. ... I fear your sympa¬ 
thies—natural sympathies for a young woman— 
sway you. ... Er ... as in the instance of this 
young man. His letter was not kindly, not consider¬ 
ate. It hurt people's feelings. Then, it appears, 
you have hired him. ... I hope that step may be 
reconsidered. . . . Gibeon—found this young man 
unsatisfactory.” 

“Would that have anything to do with—the chattel 
mortgage?” 

“It might—it might.” 

“My uncle always followed your advice ?” 

“Ah . . . implicitly.” 

“He did not grow rich,” said Carmel. 

“He lived,” said Mr. Fownes, and blinked his little 
eyes as he turned his placid gaze full upon her. 

“I think you have made yourself clear, Mr. 

49 


CONTRABAND 


Fownes. I shall think over what you have said— 
and you will know my decision.” 

“Consider well—er—from all angles. . . . Moun¬ 
tain came to Mohammed. ...” 

He commenced to warp himself away from the 
railing, and slowly, ponderously, testing the security 
of each- foot before he trusted his weight to it, he 
moved toward the door. There he paused, turned 
his bulk, the whole of him, for it was quite impos¬ 
sible for him to turn his head without his shoulders 
going along with it, and smiled the most placid 
smile Carmel ever saw. “Er—I am a widower,” 
he said. . . . 

Carmel remained standing, her eyes following him 
as he turned up the street. “What’s underneath it 
all?” she said, aloud. “What’s it all about?” 

Evan Pell turned in his chair and said, sharply, 
“Textbooks have this merit at least—they can in¬ 
struct in the simplest rules of logic.” 

“The fatuous idiot,” said Carmel. 

“It must be a great satisfaction,” said Evan, dryly, 
“to understand human beings so thoroughly.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I was admiring,” said Evan, “the unerring cer¬ 
tainty with which you arrived at Mr. Fownes’s true 
character.” 

She peered at him, searching for a trace of irony, 
but his face was innocent, bland. 

“Why does a wealthy man like Mr. Fownes—a 
powerful man—give a thought to so insignificant a 
thing as this paper?” 


50 


CONTRABAND 

“An interesting speculation—provided your prem¬ 
ises are true.” 

“What premises?” 

“Your major premise, so to speak—wealth.” 

“Why, is he not rich?” 

“All the indications bear you out.” 

“He owns mills, and miles of timberland.” 

“Um! . . . Am I to remain in your employ—or 
shall you accept the—advice—of Mr. Fownes?” 

“This is my paper. So long as it is mine Fm go¬ 
ing to try to run it. And if that man thinks he can 
threaten me with his old chattel mortgage, he’s go¬ 
ing to wake up one bright morning to find his mis¬ 
take. Maybe he can take this paper away from me, 
but until he does it’s mine. ... You are working 
for me, Mr. Pell.” 

“Very gratifying. . . . In which case, if you mean 
what you say, and if I, with so many years wasted 
upon books, as you say, may offer a word of advice, 
this would be it: Find out who owns the Lakeside 
Hotel.” 

“What do you mean?” 

He shrugged his shoulders. “Protracted study of 
the various sciences may be folly, but it does train the 
mind to correct observation and in the ability to ar¬ 
range and classify the data observed. It teaches how 
to move from cause to effect. It teaches that things 
which equal the same thing are equal to each other.” 

“What is the Lakeside Hotel?” 

“A resort of sordid reputation some three miles 
from town.” 


51 


CONTRABAND 


“And who owns it?” 

“Jonathan Bangs, colloquially known as Pee wee, 
is the reputed owner.” 

“And what has that to do with Abner Fownes?” 
“That,” he said, “is a matter which has aroused 
my curiosity for some time.” 


CHAPTER V 


/^■ARMEL was not long in discovering Gibeon’s 
attitude toward advertising. The local mer¬ 
chants regarded it much as they did taxes, the dull 
season , so called ( for in Gibeon’s business world there 
were only two seasons, the dull and the busy) and in¬ 
ventory sales. All were inevitable, in the course of 
nature, and things which always had and always 
would happen. One advertised, not with enthusiasm 
and in expectancy of results, but because men in 
business did advertise. Smith Brothers’ grocery 
bore reluctantly the expense of a four-inch double¬ 
column display which was as unchanging as the laws 
of the Medes and Persians. It stated, year in and 
year out, that Smith Brothers were the headquarters 
for staple and fancy groceries. The advertisement 
was as much a part of their business as the counter. 
The Busy Big Store was more energetic; its copy 
was changed every year on the 1st of January. Seven 
years before, Miss Gammidge let it be known through 
the columns of the Free Press that she was willing 
to sell to the public millinery and fancy goods, and 
that statement appeared every week thereafter with¬ 
out change of punctuation mark. The idea that one 
attracted business by means of advertising was one 
which had not penetrated Gibeon, advertising was a 

53 


CONTRABAND 


business rite, just as singing the Doxology was an 
indispensable item in the service of the local Presby¬ 
terian church. It was done, as cheaply and incon¬ 
spicuously as possible, and there was an end of it. 

As for subscribers, they were hereditary. Just as 
red hair ran in certain families, subscribing to the 
paper ran in others. It is doubtful if anybody took 
in the paper because he wanted it; but it was tra¬ 
dition for some to have the Free Press, and there¬ 
fore they subscribed. It was useful for shelf cover¬ 
ing. Red hair is the exception rather than the rule; 
so were subscribing families. 

Carmel pondered deeply over these facts. If, she 
said to herself, all the merchants advertised as they 
should advertise, and if all the inhabitants who should 
subscribe did subscribe, then the Free Press could 
be made a satisfactorily profitable enterprise. How 
might these desirable results be obtained? She was 
certain subscribers might be gotten by making the 
paper so interesting that nobody could endure to 
wait and borrow his neighbor’s copy; but how to 
induce merchants to advertise she had not the re¬ 
motest idea. 

There was the bazaar, for instance, which did not 
advertise at all; the bank did not advertise; the two 
photographers did not advertise; the bakery did not 
advertise. She discussed the matter with Tubal and 
Simmy, who were not of the least assistance, though 
very eager. She did not discuss it with Prof. Evan 
Bartholomew Pell because that member of the staff 
was engaged in writing a snappy, heart-gripping 

54 


CONTRABAND 


article on the subject of “Myths and Fables Com¬ 
mon to Peoples of Aryan Derivation.” It was his 
idea of up-to-date journalism, and because Carmel 
could think of nothing else to set him to work at, 
she permitted him to continue. 

“Advertising pays,” she said to Tubal. “How can 
I prove it to these people?” 

“Gawd knows, Lady. Jest go tell ’em. Mebby 
they’ll believe you.” 

“They won’t b’lieve nothin’ that costs/ 9 said 
Simmy, with finality. 

“I’m going out to solicit advertising,” she said, 
“and I’m not coming back until I get something.” 

“Um ! . <. . G’-by, Lady. Hope we see you 
ag’in.” 

In front of the office Carmel hesitated, then turned 
to the left. The first place of business in that direc¬ 
tion was identified by a small black-and-gold sign 
protruding over the sidewalk, making it known that 
here one might obtain the handiwork of Lancelot 
Bangs, Photographer. In glass cases about the doors 
were numerous specimens of Lancelot’s art, mostly 
of cabinet size, mounted on gilt-edged cards. Mr. 
Bangs, it would appear, had few ideas as to the 
posturing of his patrons. Gentlemen, photographed 
alone, were invariably seated in a huge chair, the 
left hand gripping the arm, inexorably, the right 
elbow leaning upon the other arm, and the head 
turned slightly to one side as if the sitter were think¬ 
ing deep thoughts of a solemn nature. Ladies stood, 
one foot advanced, hands clasped upon the stomach 

55 


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in order that the wedding ring might show plainly; 
with chins dipped a trifle downward and eyes lifted 
coyly, which, in dowagers of sixty, with embonpoints 
and steel-rimmed spectacles, gave a highly desirable 
effect. 

Carmel studied these works of art briefly and then 
climbed the uncarpeted stairs. Each step bore upon 
its tread a printed cardboard sign informative of some 
business or profession carried on in the rooms above, 
such as Jenkins & Hopper, Fire Insurance; Warren 
P. Bauer, D.D.S., and the like. The first door at 
the top, curtained within, was labeled Photographic 
Studio, and this Carmel entered with some trepida¬ 
tion, for it was her first business call. As the door 
swung inward a bell sounded in the distance. Car¬ 
mel stood waiting. 

Almost instantly a youngish man appeared from 
behind a screen depicting a grayish-blue forest prac¬ 
tically lost to view in a dense fog. At sight of 
Carmel he halted abruptly and altered his bearing 
and expression to one of elegant hospitality. He 
settled his vest cautiously, and passed his hand over 
his sleek hair daintily to reassure himself of its per¬ 
fect sleekness. Then he bowed. 

"A-aa-ah. . . . Good morning!” he said, tenta¬ 
tively. 

"Mr. Bangs ?” 

"The same.” 

"I am Miss Lee, proprietor of the Free Press ” 

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Lee, 
though, of course, I knew who you were right off. 

56 


CONTRABAND 


I guess everybody in town does,” he added. “We 
don’t have many move here that would photograph 
as well as you would—bust or full length. . . . What 
kin I do for you?” 

“I came to talk to you about advertising in the 
Free Press” 

'‘Advertising!” Manifestly he was taken aback. 
“Why, I haven’t ever advertised. Haven’t anythin’ 
to advertise. I just take pictures.” 

“Couldn’t you advertise that?” 

“Why—everybody knows I take pictures. Be 
kind of funny to tell folks what everybody knows.” 
He laughed at the humor of it in a very genteel way. 

“You would like to take more pictures than you 
do, wouldn’t you ? To attract more business.” 

“Can’t be done.” 

“Why?” 

“Wa-al, folks don’t get their pictures taken like 
they buy flour. Uh-uh! . . . They got to have a 
reason to have ’em taken—like a weddin’, or an en¬ 
gagement, or gettin’ to be sixty year old, or suthin’ 
sim’lar. No. Folks in Gibeon don’t just go off and 
get photographed on the spur of the moment, like 
you might say. They hain’t got any reason to.” 

“There are lots of people here who have never 
been photographed, aren’t there?” 

“Snags of ’em.” 

“Then why not induce them to do it at once?” 

“Can’t be done, no more ’n you can induce a man 
to have a weddin’ anniversary when he hain’t got 
one.” 


5 


57 


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“I believe it could. I think we could put the idea 
into their heads and then offer them inducements 
to do it right off.” 

He shook his head stubbornly and glanced down 
at the crease in his trousers. Carmel’s eyes twinkled 
as she regarded him, for he was quite the dressiest 
person she had seen in Gibeon. He was painstak¬ 
ingly dressed, laboriously dressed. He was so much 
dressed that you became aware of his clothes before 
you became aware of him. 

“Mr. Bangs,” she said, “you look to me like a man 
who is up to the minute—like a man who would 
never let a chance slip past him.” 

“Folks do give me credit for keepin’ my eyes 
open.” 

“Then I believe I can make you a proposition you 
can’t refuse. I just want to prove to you what ad¬ 
vertising can do for your business. Now, if you will 
let me write an ad for you, and print it, I can show 
you, and I know it. How much are your best cabinet 
photographs?” 

“Twelve dollars a dozen.” 

“Would there be a profit at ten dollars?” 

“Some— some” 

“Then let me advertise that for a week you will 
sell your twelve-dollar pictures for ten. The ad¬ 
vertisement will cost five dollars. If my advertise¬ 
ment brings you enough business so your profit will 
be double that amount, you are to pay for the ad. 
If it is less, you needn’t pay. . * „ But if it does 
bring in so many customers, you must agree to run 

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your ad every week for three months. . . . Now, I 
—I dare you to take a chance.” 

Now there was one thing upon which Lancelot 
Bangs prided himself, and that was his willingness 
to take a chance. He had been known to play cards 
for money, and the horse races of the vicinity might 
always count upon him as a patron. Beside that, he 
had a natural wish to impress favorably this very 
pretty girl whose manner and clothes and bearing 
coincided with his ideal of a “lady.” 

‘Til jest go you once,” he said. 

“Thank you,” she said, and was turning toward the 
door when Lancelot arrested her. 

“Er—I wonder if I could get your opinion?” he 
said. “You come from where folks know what’s 
what. . . . This suit, now.” He turned completely 
around so she might view it from all sides. “How 
does it stand up alongside the best dressers where 
you come from?” 

“It—it is very impressive, Mr. Bangs.” 

“Kind of figgered it would be. Had it made to 
order. Got a reputation to keep up, even though 
there’s them that tries to undermine it. Folks calls 
me the best-dressed man in Gibeon, and I feel it’s 
my duty to live up to it. . . . Well, I ain’t vain. 
Jest kind of public duty. Now George, he’s set out 
to be the best-dressed man, and so’s Luke. That’s 
why I got this suit and this shirt and tie. I aim to 
show ’em.” 

“I should say you were doing it,” said Carmel. 
“And who are Luke and George?” 

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“George Bogardus is the undertaker, and Luke 
Smiley clerks in the bank.” 

“I haven’t seen them,” said Carmel, “but I’m cer¬ 
tain you haven’t the least cause for worry.” 

“Would you call this suit genteel?” 

“That’s the word. It is exactly the word. It—it’s 
the most genteel suit I ever saw.” 

She was about to leave when a rapping on the 
back door of the studio attracted Mr. Bangs’s atten¬ 
tion, and attracted it so peculiarly that Carmel could 
not but remark it with something more than curi¬ 
osity. If one can have suspicion of an individual 
one does not know, with whose life and its ramifica¬ 
tions she is utterly unaware, Carmel was suspicious of 
Mr. Bangs. It was not an active suspicion—it was 
a vague suspicion. It resembled those vague odors 
which sometimes are abroad in the air, odors too 
faint to be identified, so adumbrant one cannot be 
sure there is an odor at all. . . . Mr. Bangs, who 
had been the picture of self-satisfaction, became fur¬ 
tive. For the first time one ceased to be aware of 
his clothes and focused upon his eyes. . . . 

“Er—pardon me a moment,” he said, in a changed 
voice, and made overrapid progress to answer the 
knock. It was inevitable that Carmel’s ears should 
become alert. 

She heard a door opened and the entrance of a 
man who spoke in an attempted whisper, but not a 
successful whisper. It was as if a Holstein bull had 
essayed to whisper. 

“Sh-sssh!” warned Mr. Bangs. 

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“It’s here,” said the whisper. “Back your jitney 
into the first tote road this side of the hotel, and then 
mosey off and take a nap. Everything ’ll be fixed 
when you git back.” 

“Sh-sssh!” Mr. Bangs warned a second time. 

Carmel heard the door open and close again, and 
Mr. Bangs returned. 

“Express Parcel,” he said, with that guilty air 
which always accompanies the unskillful lie. 

The zest for selling advertising space had left Car¬ 
mel ; she wanted to think, to be alone and to consider 
various matters. She felt a vague apprehension, not 
as to herself, but of something malign, molelike, 
stealthy, which dwelt in the atmosphere surrounding 
Gibeon. Perfunctorily she took her leave, and, in¬ 
stead of pursuing her quest, returned to her desk 
and sat there staring at the picture above her head. 

Gibeon! She was thinking about Gibeon. The 
town had ceased to be a more or less thriving rural 
community, peopled by simple souls who went about 
their simple, humdrum round of life pleasantly, if 
stodgily. Rather the town and its people became a 
protective covering, a sort of camouflage to conceal 
the real thing which enacted itself invisibly. She 
wondered if Gibeon itself realized. It seemed not 
to. It laughed and worked and went to church and 
quarreled about line fences and dogs and gossiped 
about its neighbors as any other town did. . . . Per¬ 
haps, unaccustomed to the life, excited by new en¬ 
vironment, she had given too great freedom to her 
imagination. . . . She did not believe so. No. 

61 


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Something was going on; some powerful evil in¬ 
fluence was at work, ruthless, malevolent. Its face 
was hidden and it left no footprints. It was capable 
of murder! . . . What was this thing? What was 
its purpose? What activity could include the doing 
away with a sheriff and the services of a rural fop 
like Lancelot Bangs? . . . 

Carmel was young. She was dainty, lovely. Al¬ 
ways she had been shielded and protected and petted— 
which, fortunately, had not impaired the fiber of her 
character. . . . Now, for the first time, she found 
herself staring into the white, night eyes of one of 
life's grim realities; knew herself to be touched by 
it—and the knowledge frightened her. . . . 

Evan Bartholomew Pell stayed her unpleasant 
thoughts, and she was grateful to him. 

“Miss Lee—I have—ah—been engaged upon a 
computation of some interest—academically. It is, 
of course, based upon an arbitrary hypothesis—never¬ 
theless it is instructive." 

“Yes," said Carmel, wearily. 

“We take for our hypothesis," said Evan, “the 
existence of a number of men willing to evade or 
break the law for profit. Having assumed the exis¬ 
tence of such an association, we arrive upon more 
certain ground. . . . Our known facts are these. 
Intoxicating liquor is prohibited in the United States. 
Second, intoxicants may be bought freely over the 
Canadian line. Third, the national boundary is some 
twenty miles distant. Fourth, whisky, gin, et cetera, 
command exceedingly high prices in the United 

62 


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States. I am informed liquor of excellent quality 
commands as much as a hundred dollars per dozen 
bottles, and less desirable stock up to fifty and 
seventy-five dollars. Fifth, these same liquors may 
be bought for a fraction of that cost across the line. 
Now, we arrive at one of our conclusions. The hy¬ 
pothetical association of lawless men, provided they 
could smuggle liquor into this country, would realize 
a remarkable percentage of profit. Deducting vari¬ 
ous costs, I estimate the average profit per dozen 
bottles would approximate thirty-five dollars. I 
fancy this is low rather than excessive. One thou¬ 
sand cases would fetch a profit of thirty-five thou¬ 
sand dollars. . . . Let us suppose an efficient com¬ 
pany engaged in the traffic. They would smuggle 
into the country a thousand cases a month. , , . In 
that case their earnings would total three hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars. . . . Ahem! « . * Inter¬ 
esting, is it not?” 

“Yes,” said Carmel, “but what set you thinking 
about it?” 

Evan peered at her gravely through his spectacles, 
as he might peer at some minute zoological specimen 
through a microscope, and was long in replying. 

“I—er—was merely wondering,” he said, “if a life 
of lawlessness could not offer greater rewards than 
—ah—respectable journalism,” 

“Are you proposing that I become a—rum 
runner ?” 

“Not exactly,” said Evan Bartholomew, “not pre¬ 
cisely. I was, so to speak, offering you an oppor- 

63 


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tunity to exercise your reason. ... If exercise is 
salubrious for the body, why not for the mind ?” He 
cleared his throat and turned his back upon her 
abruptly. 

“The various sciences you have studied,” she said, 
sharply, “did not include good manners.” 

“As I understand it,” said Evan, “our relations 
are not social, but purely of a business nature. If I 
am in error, I beg you to correct me.” 

Carmel smiled^ What a strange, self-centered, 
egotistical little creature he was! So this was what 
became of infant prodigies. . . . They dried up into 
dusty intellect, lived for intellect alone; became a 
species of hermit living in social poverty in the cave 
of their own skulls! 

“I cannot,” she said, “fancy you in any relation 
which remotely approximated social.” 

“H’m!” said Professor Pell. 


CHAPTER VI 


TT was on the morning following the issuance of 
the second publication of the Free Press under 
Carmel’s editorship that she became uneasily aware 
of a marked scrutiny of herself by Evan Bartholo¬ 
mew Pell. There was nothing covert about his study 
of her; it was open and patent and unabashed. He 
stared at her. He watched her every movement, 
and his puckered eyes, wearing their most studious 
expression, followed her every movement. It was 
the first sign of direct interest he had manifested in 
her as a human being—as distinct from an employer 
—and she wondered at it even while it discomfited 
her. Even a young woman confident in no mean 
possession of comeliness may be discomfited by a 
persistent stare. It was not an admiring stare; rather 
it was a researchful stare, a sort of anatomical stare. 
Being a direct young person, Carmel was about to 
ask him what he meant by it, when he spared her 
the trouble. 

“Er—as I was approaching the office this morn¬ 
ing,” he said, in an especially dry and scholarly voice, 
“I chanced to overhear a young man make the follow¬ 
ing remark, namely: ‘Mary Jenkins is a pretty girl/ 
. . . Now it is possible I have encountered that ex¬ 
pression on numerous occasions, but this is the first 

65 


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time I have become conscious of it, and curious con¬ 
cerning it.” 

“Curious?” 

“Precisely. ... As to its significance and—er— 
its causes. I have been giving consideration to it. It 
is not without interest.” 

“Pretty girls,” said Carmel, somewhat flippantly, 
“are always supposed to be of interest to men.” 

“Um! ... I have not found them so. That is 
not the point. What arrested my thought was this: 
What constitutes prettiness? Why is one girl pretty 
and another not pretty? You follow me?” 

“I think so.” 

“Prettiness, as I understand it, is a quality of the 
personal appearance which gives to the beholder a 
pleasurable sensation.” 

“Something of the sort.” 

“Ah. . . . Then, what causes it ? It is intangible. 
Let us examine concrete examples. Let us stand 
side by side Mary Jenkins, who is said to possess 
this quality, and—shall we say?—Mrs. Bogardus, 
who is reputed not to possess it. Why is one pretty 
and the other quite the opposite of pretty ?” He shook 
his head. “I confess I had never become consciously 
aware of this difference between women. ...” 

“What?” 

He opened his eyes in mild surprise at the force of 
her exclamation. 

“As a matter of fact,” he said, patiently, “I do 
not recall taking special notice of any individual 

66 


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woman. ... As to this matter of prettiness—what 
constitutes it? What assembling of features and 
contours create a pleasant sensation in the beholder, 
and why? . . * Perhaps you noted how I have been 
scrutinizing you this morning?” 

“I most certainly did.” 

“Um! ... It was for the purpose of determin¬ 
ing if your appearance aroused pleasant sensations 
in myself.” 

“And did it?" 

He wrinked his eyes behind his glasses and pushed 
stiff fingers through his hair. “It is difficult to de¬ 
termine with accuracy, or to state in terms the degree 
of pleasure derived, but I am almost certain that I 
derive a mild satisfaction from regarding you.” 

“I—I am overwhelmed,” said Carmel, and with 
abruptness she passed through the wicket and out 
into the composing room, where she sat down in 
Tubal’s rope-bottomed chair, breathless with laughter. 

“Oh, Tubal,” she said, “what sort of creature is 
he anyhow?” 

“The Prof. ?” 

She nodded weakly. 

“H’m . . . The Prof.’s a kind of cabbage that 
never headed up,” said Tubal, with finality. “He’s 
got all the roots and leaves, like that kind of a cab¬ 
bage, and, sim’lar, he hain’t no idee how to fold ’em 
up, or why he’s a cabbage, nor that cabbages is the 
chief ingredient of sauerkraut.” 

“Yes,” said Carmel, “that’s it.” And for a long 
time after that she continued to think of Evan Pell 

67 


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as a cabbage which had grown to maturity with¬ 
out fulfilling a cabbage’s chief object in life, which 
is to head. “Only,” she said, “he’s really just the 
opposite. He’s never done anything but come 
to head. He’s comatose from his eyebrows to his 
toes.” 

The second issue of the Free Press had brought 
faint encouragement. There had been a slight in¬ 
crease in advertising, due to Carmel’s solicitations, 
but her pleasure in this growth was somewhat dimmed 
by a guilty feeling that it was not due to any merit 
of the paper, or of her solicitations, but to a sort of 
rudimentary gallantry on the part of a few mer¬ 
chants. . . . Perhaps half a dozen men had lounged 
in to subscribe, investing a dollar and a half in curi¬ 
osity. . . . But, to put the worst face on it, she had 
held her own. 

She really felt she had improved the paper. The 
columns of personals, which had been intrusted to 
Evan Pell, were full of items. He had shown an 
unusual aptitude for observing the minutiae of the 
community. Having observed, he would have re¬ 
ported in the language of a treatise on sociology, but 
Carmel referred him to the files, and admonished 
him to study the style of the late Uncle Nupley. 
This he had done grimly, ironically, and the result 
was a parrotlike faithfulness. . . . He had also read 
and corrected all the proofs, to the end that the sen¬ 
sibilities of the community be not offended by gram¬ 
matical gaucheries. 

He had been offended close to resignation when 

68 


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Carmel insisted upon running, in inch-tall, wooden 
type—across the top of the first page—this query: 

WHO IS THE HANDSOMEST MAN IN GIBEON 

That was her great idea, born of her interview 
with Lancelot Bangs. “If papers run beauty con¬ 
tests for women,” she said, “why not run handsome 
contests for men ? . . . Anyhow, it ’ll be fun, and 
I’m entitled to a little pleasure. Men are vain. It 
will make talk, and talk is advertising, and adver¬ 
tising pays.” 

Evan inveighed against the scheme as undignified, 
stultifying, and belittling to a dignified profession. 

“If it brings in subscriptions—and dollars,” said 
Carmel, “we should worry!” 

Evan closed his eyes in pain. “ We should worry! 
. . . I beg of you. . . . That barbaric phrase! The 
basest argot. Our newspapers should be the pal¬ 
ladium of the purity of the language. If such ex¬ 
pressions are tolerated-” He stopped abruptly 

because his mind could not encompass the horrors 
which would result from their toleration. 

“Anyhow, I’m going to do it—and you’ll see. A 
regular voting. Coupons and everything. We’ll 
have a six months’ subscription worth fifty votes, a 
year’s subscription worth a hundred votes.” 

“But—er—who will they vote for?” 

“Just wait,” she said. 

Following which she proceeded with enthusiasm. 
First she printed the rules of the contest in the Free 
Press, and then she went to Tubal. 

69 



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“I want to stick things up all over the township,” 
she said, “telling about it.” 

“We got a mess of yaller stock,” he said. “You 
write it out and I’ll print it, and we’ll make the Prof, 
go and paste ’em up.” 

So it was done, and on a day Gibeon awoke to 
find itself placarded with large yellow notices mak¬ 
ing it know that the Free Press was in a fever to 
discover who was considered the handsomest man 
in town, and to read the paper for particulars. Car¬ 
mel was right—it caused talk. . . . 

In other matters she was feeling her way, and 
the way was not plain to her. Of petty news 
there was aplenty, and this she printed. She also 
printed a trifling item about a traveling salesman 
who had been “making” the territory for years 
in a buggy, and who had been detected in the act 
of smuggling a few bottles of liquor over the 
border in his sample case, thus adding to a meager 
income. 

“There’s your vast liquor traffic,” she said to Evan 
Pell, “a poor, fat little drummer with six bottles of 
whisky.” 

“Urn! . . . Who arrested him?” 

“Deputy Jenney,” she said. 

“There is,” said Evan, “a phrase which I have 
noted in the public prints. It is, "strangling com¬ 
petition.’ ” 

"‘What do you mean?” 

“Why—er—if you were engaged in a—profitable 
enterprise, and some individual—er—encroached, 

70 


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you would abate him, would you not? That is the 
ethics of business.” 

“Do you infer this drummer was abated as a com¬ 
petitor ?” 

“Oh, not in the least—not in the least!” He spoke 
airily, as one who disposes of a troublesome child. 

The incident, small as it was, troubled her. Evan 
Pell, by his cryptic utterances, set her thinking. 
... If her imagination had not tricked her wholly 
there was a reticence about Gibeon; there was some¬ 
thing Gibeon hid away from her. ... A thing was 
transpiring which Gibeon did not wish to be known 
—at least the powerful in Gibeon. . . . She had 
encountered whisperings and slynesses. . . . She 
laughed at herself. She would be seeing specters 
presently, she told herself. . . . But there was the 
disappearance of Sheriff Churchill. There was the 
warning note to herself. There were many petty 
incidents such as the one in Lancelot Bangs’s studio. 
But why connect them with illicit traffic in intoxi¬ 
cants? . . . It was absurd to imagine an entire 
town debauched by the gainfulness of whisky run¬ 
ning. ... It were a matter best left alone. 

And so, pursuing her policy of feeling her way, 
the current issue of the Free Press was quite in¬ 
nocuous—save for what is known technically as a 
“follow-up” on the subject of Sheriff Churchill, and 
an editorial in which was pointed out the lethargy of 
official Gibeon in assailing the mystery. 

As she was leaving the hotel after luncheon that 
day, she encountered Abner Fownes making his 

71 


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progress down the street. It was a slow, majestic 
progress, and quite impressive. Mr. Fownes car¬ 
ried himself with an air. He realized his respon¬ 
sibilities as a personage, and proceeded with the air 
of a statesman riding in a victoria through a cheer¬ 
ing crowd. He spoke affably and ostentatiously to 
everyone, but when he met Carmel face to face, he 
paused. 

“Um! ... A hum! ... I have read the paper 
—read it all.” 

”1 hope it pleased you.” 

“It did not,” said Mr. Fownes. 

“Indeed! What fault did you find?” 

“You didn’t consult with me. . . . Told you to 
consult with me. . . . Number of things shouldn’t 
have been mentioned. Editorial on Churchill—bad 
business. . . . Young woman, you can see past the 
end of your nose.” 

“I hope so.” 

“Didn’t I make myself plain?” 

“You did.” 

“Um! . . . Hem! . . . No time for nonsense. 
After this—want to see every line goes in that paper.” 

“Before it is published?” Carmel was stirred to 
antagonism, but forced herself to speak without 
heat. 

“Before it’s published. . . . I’ll tell you what to 
print and what not to print.” 

“Oh,” she said, softly, “you will!” 

“I own that paper—practically. . .... I let it live. 
You’re dependent on me.” 

72 


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Carmel’s eyes snapped now; she was angry. “I 
fancied 1 owned the Free Press ” she said. 

“Just so long as I let you—and I’ll let you as long 
as you—edit it—er—conservatively.” 

“And conservatively means so long as I print what 
you want printed, and omit what you wish omitted?” 

“Exactly,” he said. “You’ve kept that school¬ 
teaching fellow after I told you not to.” 

She paused a moment, and then she said, very 
quietly and slowly, “I think, Mr. Fownes, that you 
and I have got to come to an understanding.” 

“Exactly what I’m getting at.” 

“Very well, now please listen carefully, and I’m 
sure you’ll understand. ... At this moment I own 
the Free Press . * Until your chattel mortgage falls 
due—and that is two months away—I shall continue 
to own it. . . . During that time I shall edit it as 
I see fit. I think that is clear. ... I shall ask no 
advice from you. I shall take no dictation from you. 
What I believe should be printed, I shall print. . . . 
Good afternoon, Mr. Fownes.” 

She brushed past him and walked rapidly toward 
the office; Mr. Fownes stood for a moment frowning; 
then he turned his round head upon his shoulders— 
apparently there was no neck to assist in the process 
—and stared after her. It was not an angry stare, 
nor a threatening stare. Rather it was appraising. 
If Carmel could have studied his face, and especially 
his eyes, at that moment, she would have wondered 
if he were so fatuous as she supposed. She might 
even have asked herself if he were really, as certain 
6 73 


CONTRABAND 


people in Gibeon maintained, nothing but a bump¬ 
tious figurehead, used by stronger men who worked 
in his shadow. . . . There was something in Abner 
Fownes’s eyes which was quite worthy of remark; 
but perhaps the matter most worthy of consideration 
was that he manifested no anger whatever—as a 
vain man, a little man, bearded as he had been by a 
mere girl, might have done. . . . 

He peered after her briefly, then, by a series of 
maneuvers, set his face again in the direction he had 
been traveling, and proceeded magnificently on his 
way. . . . Carmel would have been more disturbed, 
and differently disturbed, could she have seen into 
the man’s mind and read what was passing in its 
depths. His thoughts had not so much to do with 
Carmel as an editor as with Carmel as a woman. 


CHAPTER VII 


/^•ARMEL entered the office of the Free Press, 
after her encounter with Abner Fownes, in a 
temper which her most lenient friend could not de¬ 
scribe as amiable. It was no small part of Carmel’s 
charm that she could be unamiable interestingly. 
Her tempers were not set pieces, like the Niagara 
Falls display at a fireworks celebration. They did 
not glow and pour and smoke until the spectators 
were tired of them and wanted to see something else. 
Rather they were like gorgeous aerial bombs which 
rent the remote clouds with a detonation and lighted 
the heavens with a multitude of colored stars. Some¬ 
times her choicest tempers were like those progressive 
bombs which keep on detonating a half a dozen 
times and illuminating with different colored stars 
after each explosion. This particular temper was 
one of her best. 

“From now on,” she said to nobody in particular, 
and not at all for the purpose of giving information, 
“this paper is going to be run for one single purpose. 
It’s going to do everything that pompous little fat 
man, with his ears growing out of his shoulders, 
doesn’t want it to. It’s going to hunt for things he 
doesn’t like. It is going to annoy and plague and 
prod him. If a paper like this can make a man like 

75 


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him uncomfortable, he’ll never know another peace¬ 
ful moment. . . 

Evan Pell looked up from his table—over the rims 
of his spectacles—and regarded her with interest. 

“Indeed!” he said. “And what, if I may ask, has 
caused this—er—declaration of policy?” 

“He looked at me,” Carmel said, “and he—he 
wiggled all his chins at me.” 

Tubal thrust his head through the doorway. 
“What ’d he do?” he demanded, belligerently. “If 
he done anythin’ a gent shouldn’t do to a lady I’ll 
jest ca’mly walk over there and twist three-four of 
them chins clean off’n him.” 

“I wish you would. ... I wish you would. . . . 
But you mustn’t. . . . He gave me orders. He told 
me I was to let him read every bit of copy which went 
into this paper. He said I must have his O. K. on 
everything I print.” 

“Ah!” said Evan Pell. “And what did you 
rejoin?” 

“I told him this was my paper, and so long as it 
was mine, I should do exactly what I wanted with it, 
and then I turned my back and walked away leaving 
him looking like a dressed-up mushroom—a fatuous 
mushroom.” 

“A new variety,” said Pell. 

“I—I’ll make his life miserable for sixty days 
anyhow.” 

“If,” said Pell, “he permits you to continue for 
sixty days.” 

“I’ll continue, not for sixty days, but for years 

76 


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and years and years—till I’m an old, gray-headed 
woman—just to spite him. Fll make this paper 
pay! I’ll show him he can’t threaten me. I’ll-” 

“Now, Lady,” said Tubal, “if I was you I’d set 
down and cool off. If you’re spoilin’ fer a fight you 
better go into it level-headed and not jest jump in 
flailin’ your arms like a Frenchy cook in a tantrum. 
Abner Fownes hain’t no infant to be spanked and put 
to bed. If you calc’late to go after his scalp, you 
better find out how you kin git a‘grip onto his hair.” 

“And,” said Pell, “how you can prevent his—-er— 
getting a grip on yours.” 

“I don’t believe he’s as big a man as he thinks he 
is,” said Carmel. 

“I have read somewhere—I do not recall the au¬ 
thor at the moment—a word of advice which might 
apply to this situation. It is to the effect that one 
should never underestimate an antagonist.” 

“Oh, I shan’t. I’ll cool down presently, and then 
I’ll be as cold-blooded and calculating as anybody. 
But right now I—I want to—stamp on his pudgy 
toes.” 

The telephone interrupted and Evan Pell put the 
receiver to his ear. “. . . Yes, this is the Free 
Press. . . . Please repeat that. ... In Boston last 
night? . . . Who saw him? Who is speaking?” 
Then his face assumed that blank, exasperated look 
which nothing can bring in such perfection as to have 
the receiver at the other end of the line hung up in 
one’s ear. He turned to Carmel. 

“The person”—he waggled his thumb toward the 

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instrument—“who was on the wire says Sheriff 
Churchill was seen in Boston last night.” 

“Alive ?” 

“Alive.” 

“Who was it? Who saw him?” 

“When I asked that—he hung up the receiver in 
my ear.” 

“Do you suppose it is true ?” 

“Um! . . . Let us scrutinize the matter in the 
light of logic—which it is your custom to ridicule. 
First, we have an anonymous communication. 
Anonymity is always open to suspicion. Second, it 
is the newspaper which is informed—not the authori¬ 
ties. Third, it is the newspaper which has been show¬ 
ing a curiosity as to the sheriff’s whereabouts—-er— 
contrary to the wishes of certain people. . . 

“Yes. . . .” 

“From these premises I would reason: first, that 
the anonymous informer wishes the fact to be made 
public; second, that he wishes this paper to believe 
it; third, that, if the paper does believe it, it will cease 
asking where the sheriff is and why; and fourth, that 
if this report is credited, there will be no search by 
anybody for a corpus delicti ” 

“A corpus delicti! And what might that be?” 

Evan Pell sighed with that impatient tolerance 
which one exhibits toward children asking questions 
about the obvious. 

“It has been suggested,” he said, “that Sheriff 
Churchill has been murdered. The first requisite in 
the establishment of the commission of a murder 

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is the production of the corpus delicti —the body of 
the victim. If the body cannot be produced, or its 
disposal established, there can be no conviction for 
the crime. In short, a murder requires the fact of a 
dead man, and until the law can be shown a veritable 
body it is compelled, I imagine, to presume the victim 
still alive. Here, you will perceive, the effort is to 
raise a presumption that Sheriff Churchill is not a 
corpus delicti ” 

“Then you don't believe it?” 

“Do you?” 

“I—I don't know. Poor Mrs. Churchill! For 
her sake I hope it fs true.” 

“H'm! ... If I were you, Miss Lee, I would 
not inform Mrs. Churchill of this—without sub¬ 
stantiation.” 

“You are right. Nor shall I print it in the paper. 
You believe some one is deliberately imposing upon 
us?” 

“My mind,” said Evan Pell, “has been trained for 
years to seek the truth. I am an observer of facts, 
trained to separate the true from the false. That is 
the business of science and research. I think I have 
made plain my reasons for doubting the truth of this 
message.” 

“So much so,” said Carmel, “that I agree with 
you.” 

Evan smiled complacently. “I fancied you could 
not do otherwise,” he said. “Perhaps you will be 
further convinced if I tell you I am quite certain I 
recognized the voice which gave the message.” 

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“Are you sure? Who was it?” 

“I am certain in my own mind, but I could not 
take my oath in a court of law. ... I believe the 
voice was that of the little hunchback known locally 
as Peewee Bangs.” 

“The proprietor of the Lakeside Hotel?” 

Evan nodded. 

“What is this Lakeside Hotel?” Carmel asked. 
“Eve heard it mentioned, and somehow I’ve gotten 
the idea that it was—peculiar.” 

Tubal interjected an answer before Evan Pell 
could speak. “It’s a good place for sich as you be to 
keep away from. Folks drives out there in automo¬ 
biles from the big town twenty-thirty mile off, and 
has high jinks. Before prohibition come in folks 
said Peewee run a blind pig.” 

“He seems very friendly with the local politicians.” 

“Huh!” snorted Tubal. 

“I don’t understand Gibeon,” Carmel said. “Of 
course I haven’t been here long enough to know it 
and to know the people, but there’s something about 
it which seems different from other little towns I’ve 
known. The people look the same and talk the same. 
There are the same churches and lodges and the read¬ 
ing club and its auxiliaries, and I suppose there is 
the woman’s club which is exclusive, and all that. 
But, somehow, those things, the normal life of the 
place, affect me as being all on the surface, with 
something secret going on underneath. ... If 
there is anything hidden, it must be hidden from 
most of the people, too. The folks must be decent, 

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honest, hardworking. Whatever it is, they don’t 
know.” 

“What gives you such an idea ?” Evan Pell asked, 
with interest. 

“It’s a feeling—instinct, maybe. Possibly it’s be¬ 
cause I’m trying to find something, and imagine it 
all. Maybe I’ve magnified little, inconsequential 
things.” 

“What has all this to do with Abner Fownes?” 

“Why—nothing. He seems to be a rather typical 
small-town magnate. He’s egotistical, bumptious, 
small minded. He loves importance—and he’s rich. 
The professional politicians know him and his weak¬ 
nesses and use him. He’s a figurehead—so far as 
actual things go, with a lot of petty power which he 
loves to exercise. . . . He’s a bubble, and, oh, how 
I’d love to prick him!” 

Evan bowed to her with ironical deference. “Re¬ 
markable,” he said. “A clean-cut, searching analysis. 
Doubtless correct. You have been studying him 
cursorily for a matter of days, but you comprehend 
him to the innermost workings of his mind. ... I, 
a trained observer, have watched and scrutinized 
Abner Fownes for a year—and have not yet reached 
a conclusion. May I compliment you, Miss Lee?” 

Carmel’s eyes snapped. “You may,” she said, and 
then closed her lips determinedly. 

“You were going to say?” Evan asked, in his most 
irritating, pedagogical tone. 

“I was going to say that you have mighty little to 
be supercilious about. You don’t know any more 

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about this man than I do, and you’ve been here a 
year. You don’t like him because he hurt your 
vanity, and you’re so crusted over with vanity that 
whatever is inside of it is quite lost to sight. . . . 
He had you discharged as superintendent of schools, 
and it rankles. . . . It’s childlish, like that letter of 
yours. . . . Oh, you irritate me.” 

“Er—at any rate you have the quality of making 
yourself clear,” he said, dryly, not offended, she was 
surprised to note, but rather amused and tolerant. 
He was so cocksure, so wrapped up in himself and his 
abilities, so egotistical, that no word of criticism 
could reach and wound him. Carmel wanted to 
wound him, to see him wince. She was sorry for 
him because she could perceive the smallness, the 
narrowness, the poverty of his life; yet, because she 
felt, somehow, that his character was of his own 
planning and constructing, and because it was so 
eminently satisfactory to her, that it was a duty to 
goad him into a realization of his deficiencies. Evan 
Pell did not seem to her a human being, a man, so 
much as a dry-as-dust mechanism—an irritating little 
pedant lacking in all moving emotions except bound¬ 
less vanity. 

She had taken him into the office, half from sym¬ 
pathy, half because somebody was needed and he 
was the only help available. At times she regretted 
it. Now she leaned forward to challenge him. 

“You’ve boasted about your abilities as a trained 
investigator,” she said. “Very well, then, investi¬ 
gate. That’s the business of a reporter. Gibeon is 

82 


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your laboratory. You’ll find it somewhat different 
to get at facts hidden in human brains than to dis¬ 
cover the hidden properties of a chemical or to 
classify some rare plant or animal. ... I haven’t a 
trained mind. I wasn’t an infant prodigy. I haven’t 
spent my lifetime in educating my brain out of all 
usefulness, but I can see there’s something wrong 
here. Now, Mr. Pell, take your trained faculties out 
and discover what it is. There’s investigation worth 
while.” 

“Are you sure,” said Evan, “you will have the 
courage to publish what I find?” 

She shrugged her shoulders. “There’s no use talk¬ 
ing about that,” she said, “until you find something.” 

“What,” he said, provocatively, “do you want me 
to investigate first ?” 

“The one thing that cries out for investigation. 
Find out why nothing is done to discover what hap¬ 
pened to Sheriff Churchill. Find out why he dis¬ 
appeared and who made him disappear and what has 
become of him. Fetch me the answers to these ques¬ 
tions and I’ll take back all I’ve said—and apologize.” 

“Has it—er—occurred to you that perhaps Sher¬ 
iff Churchill disappeared because he—investigated 
too much?” 

“Are you afraid?” she asked. 

He wrinkled his brows and peered at her through 
his spectacles, and then, nonplused her by answering, 
calmly, “I rather fancy I am. Yes, now I come to 
give consideration to my emotions, I find I am 
apprehensive.” 


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“Then,” she said, with a shrug, “we will forget 
about it.” 

“You are trying,” he said, “to make me feel 
ashamed because I am afraid. It is useless. I shall 
not be ashamed. It is natural I should be afraid. 
Self-preservation dictates fear. The emotion of fear 
was implanted in man and animals as a—er—safety 
device to prevent them from incurring dangers. No, 
I am not in the least ashamed. . . . Fortunately, 
reason has been provided as well as fear, and, con¬ 
sequently, if reason counsels a course of action which 
fear would veto, it is only natural that intelligence 
should govern. . . . Reason should always control 
emotion. Therefore, apprehensive as I am of un¬ 
pleasant consequences to myself, I shall proceed with 
the investigation as indicated.” His tone was final. 
There was no boasting in his statement, only the 
logical presentation of a fact. He was afraid, but 
his reason indicated to him that it was worth his 
while to subject himself to the hazards of the situa¬ 
tion. Therefore he subordinated fear. 

But Carmel—responsibility sat upon her heavily in 
that moment. She had ordered or goaded a human 
being into risking his person, perhaps his life. That 
phase of it had not presented itself to her. She was 
sending a man into danger, and the responsibility of 
her doing so arose stark before her. 

“I—I have no right,” she said, hesitatingly. “I 
was wrong. I cannot allow you to put yourself in 
danger.” 

“Unfortunately,” said Evan Pell, “you have no 

84 


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vote in the matter. I have made the decision. . . . 
Of course, you may dispense with my services, but 
that will not affect my conduct. I shall find out 
what became of Sheriff Churchill and put my¬ 
self in a position to lay before the proper authori¬ 
ties substantiated facts covering all phases of his 
disappearance.” 

“But-” 

He raised his hand, palm toward her. “My de¬ 
cision is final,” he said, with asperity. 


I 


i 



CHAPTER VIII 


G IBEON was so accustomed to Abner Fownes 
that it took him for granted, as if he were a 
spell of weather, or the Opera House which had 
been erected in 1881, or the river which flowed 
through the town, tumultuously in spring and par¬ 
simoniously in the heat of summer when its moisture 
was most sorely needed. On the whole, Abner bore 
more resemblance to the river than to either weather 
or Opera House. He was tumultuous when he could 
do most damage, and ran in a sort of trickle when 
such genius as he had might be of greater service. 
On the whole, the village was glad it possessed 
Abner. He was its show piece, and they compared 
him with the show citizens of adjacent centers of 
population. 

Your remote villages are conscious of their out¬ 
standing personalities, and, however much they may 
dislike them personally and quarrel with them in the 
family, they flaunt them in the faces of outsiders and 
boast of their eccentricities and take pride in their 
mannerisms. So Gibeon fancied it knew Abner 
Fownes from the meticulous crust in which his tailor 
incased him inward to his exact geometrical center; 
it was positive it comprehended his every thought 
and perceived the motive for his every action. For 

86 


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the most part its attitude was tolerant. Gibeon 
fancied it allowed Abner to function, and that it 
could put a stop to his functioning whenever it de¬ 
sired. The power of his money was appraised and 
appreciated; but it was more than a little inclined 
to laugh at his bumptious pretense of arbitrary power. 
George Bogardus, furniture dealer and undertaker, 
embalmed the public estimate in words and phrases. 

“Abner,” said Bogardus, “figgers himself out to 
be a hell of a feller, and it does him a sight of good 
and keeps his appetite hearty—and, so fur’s 1 kin see, 
’tain’t no detriment to nobody else.” 

Gibeon had its moments of irritation when Abner 
seemed to take too much for granted or when he 
drove with too tight a check rein, but these were 
ephemeral. On the whole, the town’s attitude was 
to let Abner do it, and then to call him a fool for 
his pains. 

He was a native of Gibeon. His father before 
him had moved to the town when it was only a four 
corners in the woods, and had acquired, little by 
little, timber and mills, which increased in size from 
year to year. Gibeon had grown with the mills and 
with the coming of the railroad. Old Man Fownes 
had been instrumental in elevating it to the dignity 
of county seat. He had vanished from the scene of 
his activities when Abner was a young man, leaving 
his son extraordinarily well off for that day. 

Abner, as a youth, had belonged to that short, 
stout class of men who are made fun of by the girls. 
He was never able to increase his stature, but his 

87 


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girth responded to excellent cookery. No man denied 
him the attribute of industry in those early days, 
and, as Gibeon judged, it was more by doggedness 
and stodgy determination that he was enabled to 
increase his inherited fortune than it was by the 
possession of keen mental faculties. 

For ten years Abner was satisfied to devote him¬ 
self to the husbanding and increasing of his resources. 
At the end of that time, his wife having died, he 
discovered to Gibeon an ambition to rule and a 
predilection for county politics. It was made ap¬ 
parent how he realized himself a figure in the world, 
and tried to live up to the best traditions of such 
personages as his narrow vision had enabled him to 
catch glimpses of. He seemed, of a sudden, to cease 
taking satisfaction in his moderate possessions and 
to desire to become a man of commanding wealth. 
He bought himself garments and caused himself to 
become impressive. He never allowed himself an 
unimpressive moment. Always he was before the 
public and conducting himself as he judged the public 
desired to see a personage conduct himself. By word 
and act he asserted himself to be a personage, and 
as the years went by the mere force of reiterated as¬ 
sertion caused Gibeon to accept him at his own valua¬ 
tion. . . . He was patient. 

The fact that fifty of every hundred male inhabi¬ 
tants were on his payroll gave him a definite power 
to start with. He used this power to its limit. It 
is true that Gibeon laughed up its sleeve and said 
that smarter men than Abner used him as an imple- 

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ment in the political workshop; but if this were true, 
Abner seemed unconscious of it. What he seemed 
to desire was the appearance rather than the sub¬ 
stance. It seemed to matter little to him who actually 
made decisions so long as he was publicly credited 
with making them. Yet, with all this, with all 
Gibeon’s sure knowledge of his inner workings, it 
was a little afraid of him because—well, because he 
might possess some of the power he claimed. 

So, gradually, patiently, year by year, he had 
reached out farther and farther for money and for 
political power until he was credited with being a 
millionaire, and had at least the outward seeming of 
a not inconsiderable Pooh-Bah in the councils of his 
party. 

The word “fatuous” did not occur in the vocabu¬ 
lary of Gibeon. If it had seen the word in print 
it could not have guessed its meaning, but it owned 
colloquial equivalents for the adjective, and with 
these it summed up Abner. He possessed other at¬ 
tributes of the fatuous man; he was vindictive where 
his vanity was touched; he was stubborn; he followed • 
little quarrels as if they had been blood feuds. In 
all the ramifications of his life there was nothing 
large, nothing daring, nothing worthy of the com¬ 
ment of an intelligent mind. He was simply a com¬ 
monplace, pompous, inflated little man who seemed 
to have found exactly what he wanted and to be 
determined to squeeze the last drop of the juice of 
personal satisfaction out of the realization of his 
ambitions. 

7 


89 


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His home was indicative of his personality. It 
was a square, red-brick house with an octagonal 
cupola on its top. It boasted a drive and evergreens, 
and on the lawn stood an alert iron buck. The cupola 
was painted white and there was a lightning rod 
which projected glitteringly from the top of it. You 
knew the lightning rod was not intended to function 
as a protection against electrical storms as soon as 
you looked at it. It was not an active lightning rod 
in any sense. It was a bumptious lightning rod 
which flaunted itself and its ornamental brass ball, 
and looked upon itself as quite capping the climax 
of Abner Fownes’s displayful life. The whole house 
impressed one as not being intended as a dwelling, 
but as a display. It was not to live in, but to inform 
passers-by that here was an edifice, erected at great 
expense, by a personage. Abner lived there after a 
fashion, and derived satisfaction from the house and 
its cupola, but particularly from its lightning rod. 
An elderly woman kept house for him. 

Abner never came out of his house—he emerged 
from it. The act was a ceremony, and one could 
imagine he visualized himself as issuing forth be¬ 
tween rows of bowing servitors, or through a lane 
of household troops in wonderful uniforms. Al¬ 
ways he drove to his office in a surrey, occupying 
the back seat, erect and conscious, while his un- 
liveried coachman sagged down in the front seat, 
sitting on his shoulder blades, and quite destroying 
the effect of solemn state. Abner, however, was not 
particular about lack of state except in his own per- 

90 


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son. Perhaps he had arrived at the conclusion that 
his own person was so impressive as to render negli¬ 
gible the appearance of any contiguous externals. 

It was his office, however, which, to his mind, 
perfectly set him off. It was the setting for the 
jewel which was himself, and it was a perfect 
setting. The office knew it. It oozed self-impor¬ 
tance. It realized its responsibilities in being the 
daily container for Abner Fownes. It was an over¬ 
bearing office, a patronizing office. It was quite 
the most bumptious place of business imaginable; 
and when Abner was in place behind his flat-topped 
mahogany desk the room took on an air of com¬ 
placency which would be maddening to an irritated 
proletariat. It was an impossible office for a lumber¬ 
man. It might have been the office of a grand duke. 
Gibeon poked fun at the office, but boasted to 
strangers about it. It had on its walls two pictures 
in shadow boxes which were believed to be old mas¬ 
ters rifled from some European gallery. What the 
pictures thought about themselves is not known, but 
they put the best possible face on the matter and 
pretended they had not been painted in a studio in 
the loft of a furniture store in Boston. Their frames 
were expensive. The walls were paneled with some 
wood of a golden tone which Abner was reputed to 
have imported for the purpose from South America. 
The sole furniture was that occupied by Abner 
Fownes—his desk and chair. There was no resting 
place for visitors—they remained standing when ad¬ 
mitted to the presence. 


91 


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If Abner Fownes, for some purpose of his own, 
with Machiavellian intelligence, had set out to create 
for himself a personality which could be described 
only by the word fatuous, he could not have done 
better. Every detail seemed to have been planned 
for the purpose of impressing the world with the 
fact that he was a man with illusions of grandeur, 
motivated by obstinate folly, blind to his silliness; 
perfectly contented in the belief that he was a human 
being who quite overshadowed his contemporaries. 
If he had possessed a strong, determined, rapacious, 
keen mind, determined upon surreptitious depreda¬ 
tions upon finance and morals, he could .not have 
chosen better. If he wished to set up a dummy 
Abner which would assert itself so loudly and fool¬ 
ishly as to render the real, mole-digging Abner in¬ 
visible to the human eye, he could not have wrought 
more skillfully. He was a perfect thing; his life 
was a perfect thing. . . . Many men, possessing 
real, malevolent power, erect up clothes-horses to 
function in their names. It was quite unthinkable 
that such a man should set himself up as his own 
stalking horse. 

Abner sat before his desk, examining a sheaf o*f 
tally sheets. They were not the tally sheets of his 
own lumber yard, but figures showing the amount 
of spruce and pine and birch and maple piled in nu¬ 
merous mill yards throughout the state. Abner owned 
this lumber. In the fall he had watched the price 
of lumber decline until he calculated it had reached 
a price from which it could only rise. Others had 

92 


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disagreed with him. Nevertheless, he had bought 
and bought and bought, intent upon one coup which 
should make him indeed the power in the lumber 
industry of the country, which was his objective. 
He had used all available funds and then had carried 
his credit into the market, stretching it until it cried 
for mercy. Now he owned enough cut lumber to 
build a small city—and the price had continued to 
drop. That morning’s market prices continued the 
decline. Abner’s state of mind was not one to arouse 
envy. 

The sum of money he must lose if he sold at the 
market represented something more than the total 
of his possessions. Gibeon rated him as a million¬ 
aire. That he was in difficulties was a secret which 
he had been able to conceal for months—and being 
who he was, and having created the myth of Abner 
Fownes, he had been able to frown down inquisitive 
bank officials and creditors and to maintain a very 
presentable aspect of solvency. But Abner needed 
money. He needed it daily and weekly. Payrolls 
must be met; current overhead expenses must be 
taken care of. Notes coming due must be reduced 
where possible—and with all market conditions in 
chaos Abner had early seen there could be no hope 
of legitimate profit lifting him out of the trap into 
which he had lowered himself. 

His reasoning had been good, but he had not fore¬ 
seen what labor would do. In his lumber camps 
through the winter of 1919-20 and the succeeding 
winter, he had paid w r oodsmen the unprecedented 

93 


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wage of seventy-five to eighty-five dollars a month. 
Some of his cutting he had jobbed, paying each in¬ 
dividual crew eight dollars a thousand feet for 
cutting, hauling, and piling in the rollways. It had 
seemed a thing impossible that six months should 
see these same lumberjacks asking employment 
at thirty-five dollars, with prospects of a drop of 
five or six dollars more! With labor up, lumber 
must go up. It had dropped below cost; now the 
labor cost had dropped and he found himself hold¬ 
ing the bag, and it was a very cumbersome bag 
indeed. 

Therefore he required a steady flow of money in 
considerable sums. It was a situation which no 
fatuous, self-righteous man could handle. It called 
for imagination, lack of righteousness, a cleverness 
in device, a fearlessness of God and man, lawlessness, 
daring. Honest methods of business could not save 
him. . * . Abner Fownes was in a bad way. . . . 
And yet when money had been required it was pro¬ 
duced. He tided things over. He produced con¬ 
siderable amounts from nowhere and there was no 
inquiring mind to ask questions. They accepted the 
fact. Abner always had controlled money, and it 
was in no wise surprising that he should continue 
to control money. . . . One thing is worthy of note. 
Abner kept in his private safe a private set of books, 
or rather, a single book. It was not large, but it was 
ample for the purpose. In this book Abner’s own 
gold fountain pen made entries, and of these entries 
his paid bookkeepers in the office without had no 

94 


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knowledge whatever. The books of Abner Fownes, 
Incorporated, showed a story quite different from 
that unfolded by the pages of the little red morocco 
book in Abner’s safe. 

There came a rap on the door, and Abner, with a 
quick, instinctive movement of his whole gelatinous 
body, became the Abner Fownes the village knew, 
pompous, patronizingly urbane, insufferably self- 
satisfied. 

'‘Come in,” he said. 

The door opened and Deputy Jenney quite filled 
the opening. He stepped quickly inside, and closed 
the door after him with elaborate caution. 

“Don’t be so confounded careful,” Abner said. 
“There’s nothing like a parade of carefulness to make 
folks suspect something.” 

“Huh! . . . Jest wanted to report we hain’t seen 
nothin’ of that motortruck of your’n that was stole.” 
He grinned broadly. “Figger to git some news of it 
to-night—along about midnight, maybe.” 

“Let Pee wee know.” 

“I have.” 

“Er-” Abner assumed character again. “I 

have heard stories of this Lakeside Hotel. . . . Blot 
on the county. . . . Canker in our midst. Stories 
of debauchery. . . . Corrupt the young. . . . Duty 
of the prosecutor to investigate.” 

“Eh?” 

“I shall come out publicly and demand it,” said 
Abner. “The place should be closed. I shall lead 
a campaign against it.” 


95 



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Deputy Jenney’s eyes grew so big the lids quite 
disappeared in the sockets. 

“Say-” he began. 

“This Peewee Bangs—so called—should be driven 
out. No telling. Probably sells whisky. . . . Do 
you suppose he sells liquor, Deputy?” 

“I—why—I don’t b’lieve Peewee’d do no sich 
thing. No, sir.” 

“I shall find out. ... By the way, I note that 
Lancelot Bangs has an advertisement in the Free 
Press. Tejl him to discontinue it—or his profits 
will drop. Make it clear.” 

“Say, that professor wrote a piece about me in 
to-day’s paper. Can’t make out what he’s hittin’ at. 
For two cents I’d lambaste him till he couldn’t drag 
himself off on his hind laigs.” 

“Er—no violence, Deputy. . . .” Abner Fownes’s 
lips drew together in an expression which was not 
at all fatuous. “A paper can do great harm even in 
a few issues,” he said. “That girl’s a stubborn 
piece.” His eyes half closed. “What’s the professor 
doing?” 

“Snoopin’ around.” 

Abner nodded. “If he could be induced—er—to 
go away.” 

“He kin,” said Mr. Jenney, “on the toe of my 
boot.” 

“Wrote a piece about you, eh?” 

“I’ll ’tend to his case,” said Mr. Jenney. “What 
be you goin’ to do wuth that newspaper?” 

“Why—er—Deputy, you wouldn’t have me—ah 

96 



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—interfere with the liberty of the press. . . . Pal¬ 
ladium of freedom. Free speech. . . . There was 
nothing else, Deputy?” 

“That’s all ” 

“I—er—hope you recover my truck. Reward, 
you know.” 

Deputy Jenney grinned again, more broadly than 
before, and left the room. 


CHAPTER IX 


D EPUTY JENNEY was a big man. In his 
stocking feet he stood a fraction more than six 
feet and two inches, but he possessed more breadth 
than even that height entitled him to. He was so 
broad that, if you saw him alone, with no ordinary 
individual beside him for comparison, he gave the 
impression of being short and squat. His weight 
was nearer three hundred than two hundred pounds. 
He was not fat. 

Most big men are hard to provoke. It is rarely 
you find a giant who uses his size as a constant 
threat. Such men are tolerant of their smaller fel¬ 
lows, slow to anger, not given to bullying and mean¬ 
ness. Deputy Jenney was a mean big man. He was 
a blusterer, and it was a joy to him to use his fists. 
You never knew where you stood with Deputy 
Jenney, nor what unpleasant turn his peculiar mind 
might give to conversation or circumstance. He was 
easily affronted, not overly intelligent, and in his 
mind was joom for no more than a single idea at a 
time. He was vain of his size and strength, and 
his chief delight was in exhibiting it, preferably in 
battle. So much for Deputy Jenney’s outstanding 
characteristic. 

As he left Abner Fownes’s office his humor was 

98 


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unpleasant. It was unpleasant for two reasons, first 
and foremost because he was afraid of Abner, and 
it enraged him to be made afraid of anybody. Sec¬ 
ond, he had been held up to ridicule in the Free Press 
and he could not endure ridicule. So the deputy re¬ 
quired a victim, and Evan Bartholomew Pell seemed 
to have selected himself for the role. If Jenney com¬ 
prehended the desires of Abner Fownes—and he fan¬ 
cied he did in this case—he had been directed to do 
what he could to induce Evan to absent himself 
permanently from Gibeon. 

He walked down the street fanning himself into 
a rage—which was no difficult matter. His rages 
were very much like the teams which draw fire 
engines—always ready for business; trained to leap 
from their stalls and to stand under the suspended 
harness. ... It was the noon hour, and as he ar¬ 
rived at the door of the Free Press office it was 
Evan Pell’s unpleasant fortune to be coming out to 
luncheon. Deputy Jenney roared at him. 

“Hey, you!” he bellowed. 

Evan paused and peered up at the big man through 
his round spectacles, a calm, self-sufficient, unemo¬ 
tional little figure of a man. The word little is used 
in comparison to Deputy Jenney, for the processor 
was not undersized. 

“Were you speaking to me ?” he asked. 

“You’re the skunk that wrote that piece about me,” 
shouted Deputy Jenney. 

“I certainly wrote an article in which you were 
mentioned/’ said Evan, who, apparently, had not 

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the least idea he stood in imminent danger of 
destruction. 

‘Til teach ye, confound ye! . . . I’ll show ye 
how to git free with folkses’ names.” Here the 
deputy applied with generous tongue a number of 
descriptive epithets. “When I git through with 
you,” he continued, “you won’t waggle a pen for a 
day or two.” And then, quite without warning the 
professor to make ready for battle, the deputy swung 
his great arm, with an enormous open hand flailing 
at its extremity, and slapped Evan just under his 
left ear. Evan left the place on which he had been 
standing suddenly and completely, bringing up in the 
road a dozen feet away dazed, astounded, feeling as 
if something had fallen upon him from a great 
height. It was his first experience with physical 
violence. Never before had a man struck him. His 
sensations were conflicting—when his head cleared 
sufficiently to enable him to perceive sensations. He 
had been struck and knocked down! He, Evan 
Bartholomew Pell, whose life was organized on a 
plane high above street brawls, had been slapped on 
the jaw publicly, had been tumbled head over heels 
ignominiously! 

He sat up dizzily and raised his hand to his eyes 
as if to assure himself his spectacles were in place. 
They were not. He stared up at Deputy Jenney 
with vague bewilderment, and Deputy Jenney laughed 
at him. 

Then Evan lost track of events temporarily. Some¬ 
thing went wrong with his highly trained reasoning 

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faculties; in short, these faculties ceased to function. 
He sprang to his feet, wholly forgetful of his spec¬ 
tacles, and leaped upon Deputy Jenney, uttering a 
cry of rage. Now Evan had not the least idea what 
was needful to be done by a man who went into 
battle; he lost sight of the fact that a man of his 
stature could not reasonably expect to make satis¬ 
factory progress in tearing apart a man of Jenney’s 
proportions. Of one thing alone he was conscious, 
and that was a desire to strew the deputy about the 
road in fragments. 

Some one who saw the fracas described it later, 
and his phrase is worth retaining. “The professor,” 
said this historian, “jest kind of b’iled up over 
Jenney.” 

That is what Evan did. He boiled up over the 
big man, inchoate, bubbling arms and legs, striking, 
kicking. Deputy Jenney was surprised, but de¬ 
lighted. He pushed Evan off with a huge hand and 
flailed him a second time under the ear. Evan re¬ 
peated his previous gymnastics. This time he picked 
himself up more quickly. His head was clear now. 
The wild rage which had possessed him was gone. 
But there remained something he had never expe¬ 
rienced before—a cold intent to kill! 

He sprang upon the deputy again, not blindly this 
time, but with such effect as a wholly inexperienced 
man could muster. He even succeeded in striking 
Jenney before he was sent whirling to a distance 
again. . . . Now, your ordinary citizen would have 
known it was high time to bring the matter to a dis- 

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creet conclusion, but Evan came to no such realiza¬ 
tion. He knew only one thing, that he must some¬ 
how batter and trample this huge animal until he 
begged for mercy. . . . 

At this instant Carmel Lee issued from the office, 
and stood petrified as she saw the deputy knock 
Evan down for the third time, and then, instead of 
screaming or running for help or of doing any of 
those things which one would have expected of a 
woman, she remained fascinated, watching the brutal 
spectacle. She was not indifferent to its brutality, 
not willing Evan should be beaten to a pulp, but 
nevertheless she stood, and nothing could have 
dragged her away. It was Evan who fascinated her 
—something about th^ professor gripped and held 
her breathless. 

She saw him get slowly to his feet, brush his 
trousers, blink calmly at the deputy as at some rather 
surprising phenomenon, and then, with the air of a 
man studiously intent upon some scientific process, 
spring upon the big man for the third time. Carmel 
could see the professor was not in a rage; she could 
see he was not frightened; she could see he was 
moved by cold, grim intention alone. . . . The 
deputy was unused to such proceedings. Generally 
when he knocked a man down that man laid quietly 
on his back and begged for mercy. There was no 
sign of begging for mercy in Evan Pell. Hitherto 
Jenney had ; used the flat of his hand as being, in his 
judgment, a sufficient weapon for the destruction of 
Evan Pell. Now, for the first time, he used his 

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fist. The professor swarmed upon him so like a 
wildcat that Jenney was unable to deliver the sort 
of blow on the exact spot intended. The blow 
glanced off Evan’s skull and the young man seized 
Jenney’s throat with both hands. Jenney tore him 
loose and hurled him away. Again Pell came at 
him, this time to be knocked flat and bleeding. He 
arose slowly, swaying on his feet, to rush again. 
Carmel stood with gripped fists, scarcely breathing, 
unable to move or to speak. The sight was not pleas¬ 
ant. Again and again the big man knocked down 
the little man, but on each occasion the little man, 
more and more slowly, more and more blindly, got 
to his feet and fell upon his antagonist. He was all 
but blind; his legs wabbled under him, he staggered, 
but always he returned to his objective. That he 
was not rendered unconscious was amazing. He 
uttered no sound. His battered lips were parted and 
his clean, white, even teeth showed through. . . . 
The deputy was beginning to feel nonplused. . . . 
He knocked Evan down again. For an instant the 
young man lay still upon his back. Presently he 
moved, rolled upon his face, struggled to his hands 
and knees, and, by the power of his will, compelled 
himself to stand erect. He wavered. Then he took 
a tottering step forward and another, always toward 
Jenney. His head rolled, but he came on. Jenney 
watched him vindictively, his hands at his sides. 
Pell came closer, lifted his right fist as if its weight 
were more than his muscles could lift, and pushed 
it into the deputy’s face. It was not a blow, but 

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there was the intention of a blow, unquenchable in¬ 
tention. . . . The deputy stepped back and struck 
again. No more was necessary. Evan Pell could 
not rise, though after a few seconds he tried to do 
so. But even then the intention which resided in 
him .was unquenched. . . . On hands and knees he 
crawled back toward Deputy Jenney—crawled, strug¬ 
gled to his enemy—only to sink upon his face at the 
big man’s feet, motionless, powerless, unconscious. 

Jenney pushed him with his foot. “There,” he 
said, a trifle uncertainly, “I guess that’ll do fer you. 
. . . And that’s what you git every time we meet. 
Remember that. Every time we meet.” 

Carmel seemed to be released now from the en¬ 
chantment which had held her motionless. She had 
seen a thing, a thing she could never forget. She 
had seen a thing called physical courage, and a higher 
thing called moral courage. That is what had held 
her, fascinated her. ... It had been grim, terrible, 
but wonderful. Every time she saw Evan return 
to his futile attack she knew she was seeing the 
functioning of a thing wholly admirable. 

“I never see sich grit,” she heard a bystander say, 
and with the dictum she agreed. It had been pure 
grit, the possession of the quality of indomitability. 

. . . And this was the man she had looked down 
upon, patronized! . . . This possession had been 
hidden within him, and even he had not dreamed of 
its presence. She caught her breath. . . . 

In an instant she was bending over Evan, lifting 
his head, wiping his lips with her handkerchief. She 

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looked up in Deputy Jenney’s eyes, and her own eyes 
blazed. 

“You coward! . . . You unspeakable coward!” 
she said. 

The deputy shuffled on his feet. “He got what was 
comin , to him. . . . He’ll git it ag’in every time I 
see him. I’ll drive him out of this here town.” 

“No,” said Carmel—and she knew she was speak¬ 
ing the truth—“you won’t drive him out of town. 
You can kill him, but you can’t drive him out of 
town.” 

The deputy shrugged his shoulders and slouched 
away. He was glad to go away. Something had 
deprived him of the enjoyment he anticipated from 
this event. He had a strange feeling that he had 
not come off victor in spite of the fact that his an¬ 
tagonist lay motionless at his feet. . . . Scowls and 
mutterings followed him, but no man dared lift his 
hand. 

Evan struggled to lift his head. Through battered 
eyes he looked at the crowd packed close about him. 

“Er—tell this crowd to disperse,” he said. 

“Can you walk?” 

“Of course,” he said in his old, dry tone—some¬ 
what shaky, but recognizable. 

“Let me help you into the office.” 

He would have none of it. “I fancy I can walk 
without assistance,” he said, and, declining her touch, 
he made his way through the crowd and into the 
office, where he sunk into a chair. Here he remained 
erect, though Carmel could see it was nothing but 
8 105 


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his will which prevented him from allowing his head 
to sink upon the table. She touched his arm. 

“Tin sorry/’ she said. “I—I want to apologize 
for—for things I have said to you.” 

He looked at her in his old manner, rather super¬ 
ciliously. “Oh, doubtless you were right,” he said. 
“I—er—do not seem to be a success as a—pugilist.” 

“You were-” 

“If you please,” he said, holding up a hand which 
he strove to keep from shaking. “If you will be 
so good as to go to luncheon.” 

“But-” 

“If you get pleasure out of seeing me like this!” 
he said with acerbity, and she, seeing how his pride 
was wounded, how he was shaken by this new expe¬ 
rience, and understanding very vaguely something 
of the emotions which must be seething within him, 
turned away and left him alone. . . . 

When Carmel returned to the office Evan Pell was 
not there, nor did she see him until the following day. 

That evening, after her supper, she walked. She 
could not remain in her room to read, nor go to the 
office to work. She was lonesome, discouraged, 
frightened. The events of the day had upset her 
until she seethed. . . . Motion was necessary. Only 
in rapid exercise could she find the anodyne neces¬ 
sary to quiet the jangling of her nerves. The eve¬ 
ning was fine, lighted by a summer moon which 
touched the mountains with magic and transformed 
the forest into a glowing mystery of silver. She did 
not walk to think, but as the distance unrolled be- 

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tween her feet and the disturbed nerves became 
quiescent, she did think. 

For the first time she considered Evan Bartholo¬ 
mew Pell as a human being. Never before had he 
been human to her, but a crackling, parchment crea¬ 
ture, not subject to joys and sorrows, not adaptable 
to friendships and social relations. She had pictured 
him carelessly as an entity to himself, unrelated to 
the world which moved about him, and loved and 
hated and coveted and covered itself with a mantle 
of charity. He had aroused her sympathy by his 
helplessness and his incapacity—a rather contemp¬ 
tuous sympathy. . . . Her contempt was gone, never 
to return. She speculated upon the possible work¬ 
ings of his mind; what was to become of him; why 
he was as he was. He became a human possibility 
in her mind, capable of something. She saw how 
there resided in him, in spite of his wasted years, 
in spite of the incubus of precocity which had ridden 
him from childhood, the spirit of which men are 
created. . . . She wondered if he were capable of 
breaking through the crust and of emerging such a 
man as the world might admire. . . . She doubted 
it. The crust was so thick and so hard. 

Of one thing she was certain—never again could 
she sneer at him or treat him with supercilious supe¬ 
riority, for, whatever his patent defects, she had been 
compelled to recognize that the foundations of him 
were admirable. . . . She vowed, in her impulsive 
way, to make amends. She went even farther, as 
is the way with girls both impulsive and calculating 

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—she determined to remake Evan Pell, to remodel 
him along lines of her own designing. . . . Women 
love to renovate men; it is, perhaps, the major side 
line to the primary business of their lives—and God 
knows what that may be! 

Carmel paid scant attention to the road she fol¬ 
lowed. It was a pleasant road, a silvery-bright road. 
It contented her and seemed a road which must lead 
to some desirable destination. The destination was 
vague and distant; she did not hope to reach it, but 
it amused and stirred her to think there must be such 
a terminal. 

She walked away from Gibeon for an hour before 
she realized that every step she took meant two steps, 
one coming and one returning. She was unconscious 
of loneliness, nor did she feel any apprehension of 
the silent woods. The spot where she paused was 
lovely with cold light and warm shadows and she 
looked about for a place to sit and rest a moment 
before her return journey. She stepped from the 
roadside and seated herself upon a fallen, rotting log, 
partially screened from the thoroughfare by clump 
growth of young spruce. 

Hardly had she taken her seat when a small auto¬ 
mobile roared around a bend and jounced and rattled 
toward Gibeon. It was going at high speed. On the 
front seat she saw two male figures, but so uncertain 
was the light and so rapid the passage that she was un¬ 
able to identify them. She started to her feet to stare 
after the car, when, to her amazement, it came to a 
skidding stop, with screaming of brakes, a scant 

108 


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hundred yards beyond her. It maneuvered a mo¬ 
ment, and then, departing from the road, groaning 
through the dry ditch that bordered it, the car forced 
its way into the woods where there was no road 
at all. 

Carmel was intrigued by this eccentric behavior. 
Automobiles, as she knew them, did not habitually 
leave excellent roads to roam about in a trackless 
forest. The cars she knew were creatures of habit, 
adhering to the beaten paths of hurrying civilization. 
She could not imagine one adventuring on its own, 
and most especially she could not conceive of one 
rambling about in the woods. She had a feeling 
that it was not right for one to do so—which was 
natural to her as a human being, for all human beings 
have a firm belief that anything not sanctioned by 
immemorial custom must be evil. New paths lead 
inevitably to damnation. 

She was startled, but not frightened. Whatever 
was going on here could not threaten her, for she 
knew herself to have been unseen; appreciated how 
easy it would be to remain in concealment. 

Presently she heard the sound of axes. . . . She 
crouched and waited—possibly for fifteen minutes. 
At the end of that time the car pushed its rump 
awkwardly out of the woods again, swung on to the 
road, and, stirring a sudden cloud of dust, sped 
toward Gibeon. ... It was only then she realized 
the car had been traveling without lights. 

She waited. The sound of the automobile van¬ 
ished in the distance and she judged it safe to in- 

109 


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vestigate. Somewhat gingerly she emerged upon the 
road and walked toward the spot where the car had 
entered the woods. The wheel tracks were plainly 
to be seen, and she followed them inward. It was 
but a step, perhaps fifty yards. At the end there was 
nothing but a pile of freshly cut sprucelings. Had 
the season been other than summer, she would have 
concluded some one was cutting Christmas trees for 
the market—but one did not cut Christmas trees in 
July! But why were the little spruces cut? There 
must be a reason. She stirred them with her foot. 
Then, with impulsive resolution, she began flinging 
them aside. 

Underneath she came upon a square of canvas—a 
cover—and concealed by this the last thing in the 
world she would have expected to come upon. . . . 
Bottles and bottles and bottles, carefully laid and 
piled. Instantly she knew, even before she lifted a 
bottle and read the label which identified it as whisky 
of foreign distillage, she had witnessed one step in a 
whisky smuggler’s progress; had surprised a cache 
of liquor which had evaded the inspectors at the 
border, a few miles away. She did not count the 
bottles, but she estimated their number—upward of 
a hundred! 

She was frightened. How it came about, by what 
process of mental cross-reference, she could not 
have said, but the one thing obtruding upon her con¬ 
sciousness was the story of the disappearance of 
Sheriff Churchill! Had he come upon such a hoard ? 
Had his discovery become known to the male- 

110 


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factors? Did that, perhaps, explain his inexplicable 
absence ? 

Carmel's impulse was to run, to absent herself 
from that spot with all possible celerity. She started, 
halted, returned. There could be no danger now, she 
argued with herself, and there might be some clew, 
something indicative of the identity of the men she 
saw in the car. If there were, it was her duty as 
proprietor of the Free Press to come into possession 
of that information. 

Fortune was with her. In the interstices of the 
bottles her groping hand came upon something small 
and hard. She held it in the moonlight. It was a 
match box made from a brass shotgun shell. . . . 
Without pausing to examine it, she slipped it se¬ 
curely into her waist, then—and her reason for 
doing so was not plain to her—she helped herself 
to a bottle of liquor, wrapped it in the light sweater 
she carried, and turned her face toward Gibeon. 


CHAPTER X 


C ARMEL went directly to the room in the hotel 
which she still occupied pending the discovery 
of a permanent boarding place. She locked the door 
carefully and closed the transom. Then with a queer 
feeling of mingled curiosity and the exultation of a 
newspaper woman, she placed side by side on her 
dresser the bottle of liquor she had abstracted from 
the cache and the match box made from a brass shot¬ 
gun shell. 

She sat down on the bed to regard them and to ask 
them questions, but found them singularly uncom¬ 
municative. Beyond the meagerest replies she could 
have nothing of them. The bottle seemed sullen, 
dour, as became a bottle of Scotch whisky. In the 
most ungracious manner it told Carmel its name and 
the name of its distillers and its age. . . . The match 
box refused to make any answers whatever, being, 
she judged, of New England descent, and therefore 
more closed mouth than even the Scotch. The bottle 
squatted and glowered dully. It wore an air of 
apprehension, and patently was on its guard. The 
brass match box, brought to a fine polish by long 
travel in an active trousers pocket, was more jaunty 
about it, having a dry, New England humor of its 
own, recognizable as such. The identifying quality 

112 


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of New England humor is that you are always a 
little in doubt as to whether it is intended to be humor. 

The conversation was one-sided and not illumin¬ 
ating. 

“Who brought you over the line?” Carmel asked. 

The bottle hunched its shoulders and said nothing, 
but the match box answered in the dialect of the 
country, “I fetched him—for comp’ny. A feller gits 
dry sleepin’ out in the woods.” 

“Who made you, anyhow?” Carmel asked of the 
match box. 

“Feller that likes to keep his matches dry.” 

“Somebody who likes to hunt,” said Carmel. 

“Wa-al, him ’n me knows our way about in the 
woods.” 

“Who was coming to get you from where you were 
hidden ?” Carmel asked the bottle, suddenly. 

“D’ye ken,” said the bottle, sourly, “I’m thinkin’ 
ye are an inquisitive body. Will ye no gang aboot 
your business, lassie. Hae doon wi’ ye; ye’ll hae 
no information frae me.” 

“Who were those two men in the car?” said 
Carmel. , 

“Strangers to me,” said the match box, non¬ 
chalantly. 

“One of them dropped you,” said Carmel. 

“Mebby he did; dunno if he did,” said the match 
box. 

“Somebody ’ll know who owns you,” said Carmel. 

“How’ll you go about finding that out?” said the 
match box. “Findin’ caches of licker in the woods 

113 


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hain’t good fer the health, seems as though. Traip¬ 
sin’ around town askin’ who owns me might fetch 
on a run of sickness.” 

“You can’t frighten me,” said Carmel. 

“Sheriff Churchill wa’n't the frightenin' kind, 
neither,” said the match box, significantly. 

“What if I put a piece in my paper telling just 
how I found you?” said Carmel. 

“Be mighty helpful to our side,” said the match 
box. “Stir up ill feelin’ without gittin’ you any 
place.” 

“What shall I do, then?” Carmel asked. 

“Can’t expect me to be givin’ you advice,” said 
the match box. And there the conversation lapsed. 
The bottle continued to glower and the match box 
to glitter with a dry sort of light, while Carmel re¬ 
garded them silently, her exasperation mounting. 
She was in the unenviable position of a person to 
whom belongs the next move, when there seems no 
place to move to. 

In the mass of uncertainty there was, as metal¬ 
lurgists say, of fact only a trace. But the trace of 
fact was important—important because it was the 
first tangible evidence coming into her possession of 
what was going on under the surface of Gibeon. 
She had promised herself to bring to retribution those 
who had caused the disappearance of Sheriff Church¬ 
ill. She felt certain it was the possession of some 
such evidence as stood before her on her dresser, 
which lay at the root of the sheriff’s vanishing. The 
thought was not comforting. Of another thing she 

114 


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felt certain, namely, that the cache she had discovered 
was no sporadic bit of liquor smuggling, but was a 
single manifestation of a systematic traffic in the 
contraband. She calculated the number of the bot¬ 
tles she had seen and the profits derived from that 
single store of whisky. It amounted to four figures. 
Supposing that amount were carried across the border 
weekly! . . . Here was no little man’s enterprise. 
Here were returns so great as to indicate the par¬ 
ticipation of an individual of more than ordinary 
stature. Also it suggested to her that such individual 
or group would not tolerate interference with this 
broad river of dollars. . . . The fate of Sheriff 
Churchill corroborated this reflection. 

The bottle and match box on her dresser were 
dangerous. They stood as if they realized how 
dangerous they were, and leered at her. She arose 
quickly and placed them in a lower drawer, covering 
them carefully with garments. The woman in her 
wished she had not made the discovery, and by it 
confronted herself with the responsibility for taking 
action. The newspaper proprietor exulted and 
planned how the most was to be derived from it. 
For the first time she felt self-distrust and wished 
for a sure counselor. She realized her aloneness. 
There was none to whom she could turn for sure 
advice; none to whom her confidence moved her. 

Her friends were few. In Gibeon she was con¬ 
fident of the loyalty of Tubal and of Simmy, the 
printer’s devil. They would fight for her, follow 
her lead to the ultimate—but neither was such as 

115 


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she could appeal to for guidance. Evan Bartholo¬ 
mew Pell owed her gratitude. Doubtless he felt 
some rudiments of it and possibly of loyalty. She 
was dubious of both. He was such a crackling, dry, 
self-centered creature—not contemptible as she had 
first seen him. Never again could she visualize him 
as contemptible. But to go to him for advice in this 
emergency seemed futile. He would guide her by 
rule and diagram. He would be pedantic and draw 
upon printed systems of logic. What she wanted 
was not cold logic out of a book, but warm, throb¬ 
bing, inspiring co-operation from out the heart. She 
glanced at her watch. It told her the hour was verg¬ 
ing toward ten. 

She sat upon the edge of her bed, debating the 
matter in hand, when there sounded a knocking upon 
her door. 

“What is it,” she called. 

“Mr. Fownes is down in the parlor a-waitin’. He 
wants to know if you'll come down and see him—if 
you hain’t to bed yit." The last sentence was ob¬ 
viously not a part of the message, but interested con¬ 
jecture on the part of the messenger. 

“What does he want ?” 

“Didn't say. I asked him, but he let on 'twan’t none 
of my business. Said it was important, though." 

Carmel pondered a moment. Aversion to the fat 
little man waged war with woman’s curiosity to 
know what his errand could be at this hour when 
Gibeon was tucking itself into its feather beds. 

“Please tell him I’ll come down," she said. 

116 



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She went down. The parlor of the hotel was 
tucked off behind the big room which was combined 
office and lounging room for traveling men and vil¬ 
lage loafers. It contained a piano which had not 
been played since it had been tuned and had not been 
tuned for a time so long that the memory of man 
runneth not to the contrary. On the wall was a 
hand painting of a forest fire, done by a talented 
relative of the hotel’s proprietor. Doubtless this 
portrayed some very special kind of forest fire, or 
it would not have called forth the artist’s genius. 
One would not know at first glance that it depicted 
a forest fire, because it looked to the uninitiated like 
a number of dilapidated red feather dusters standing 
upright in a heavy surf. But it had been done by 
hand, and Gibeon regarded it as her artistic farthest 
north. There were also two gilt chairs, evidently 
peeling after sunburn, a small onyx table and a 
piece of furniture known to furniture manufacturers 
of its period as a settee. . . . Abner Fownes was, 
on Carmel’s entrance, the settor. He arose with the 
ease and grace of a man lifting a barrel of flour 
and bowed. 

“You wished to see me?’’ she said, coldly. 

“Very much. Very much indeed.’ , 

“Your business would not wait until morning?’’ 

“I chose this hour, Miss Lee,” he said, pompously. 
“Dislike to be watched. Whole village watches me. 
. . . Doubtless very natural, but annoying.” 

“I fancied we said all it was needful to say on 
our last meeting.” 


117 


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“Time for reflection. Allowed you time to cool. 
. . . Hot youth. Er—must confess I admired your 
—er—force of character.” 

“Em sure I’m grateful.” 

“Be seated. Can’t talk standing up,” he said, as a 
potentate might invite some favored subject to be at 
ease in his august presence. “Wish to discuss your 
affairs.” 

“I don’t,” said Carmel, “with you.” 

“Um! . . . How old would you say I am ?” 

“I’ve never given your age a thought.” 

“Fifty-two,” he said, “and well preserved. Well 
preserved. Careful living. Good habits.” 

“It must be a satisfaction to you,” she said, with 
ill-concealed irony. 

“You have—er—style and beauty,” he said. 
“Valuable attributes. ... Be a credit to any man.” 

“You came to talk business, did you not?” 

“Not exactly. ... Not precisely.” 

“Will you tell me why you have come,” she said, 
sharply. 

“Certainly. Certainly. Arriving at the point.” 

“Please do so. I am tired.” 

He paused briefly while his small, sharp eyes 
traveled over her person with an estimating glance, 
a glance which heated her resentment. It w^as an 
unpleasant glance for a young woman to undergo. 

“Ahem! . . . Present your case. Inventory, so 
to speak. You own a bankrupt country paper. Never 
paid—never will. Alone in the world. No relatives. 
Nobody to help you. No money. Hard future to 

118 


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face. . . . Debit side of the ledger. Um! . . . 
Credit side shows youth—er—intelligence, education. 
All valuable assets. Shows also beauty and—er— 
the ability to look like a lady. . . . Breeding. Diffi¬ 
cult to find. Desirable.” He paused again until he 
appraised her with greedy eyes. 

Suddenly she felt apprehensive. A sense of out¬ 
rage swept over her, but for once words failed in 
the emergency. She felt her limbs tremble. The 
man’s eyes were an outrage; his manner was an 
affront. She was angry as she had never been angry 
before; terrified with a new sort of crawling, skin- 
chilling terror. She was aware of being afraid he 
might touch her; that his fat, pudgy, well-kept fingers 
might reach out and rest upon her hand or her cheek 
or her hair. If they should, she knew she would 
scream. His touch would be intolerable. She had 
a feeling it would leave a damp, ineradicable mark. 
She drew back in her chair, crouching* quivering. 

“Those assets,” he said, “entitle you to a future. 
Should realize on them. . . . Ahem! . . .” Again 
he paused and touched his cravat fussily. He glanced 
down at his little shoes, immaculate, on his tailored 
legs and impressive abdomen. “Beauty,” he said, 
“requires ease and care. . . . Um! . . . Fades with 
hard work and economy.” 

He crossed his hands on his stomach and smiled 
fatuously. “I,” he said, “have been a widower 
fifteen years. A long time. . . . Not from neces¬ 
sity. No, indeed. But my home, the sort of home 
I maintain—in keeping with my position—er—re- 

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quires an adequate mistress. . . . One possessing 
qualities. Yes, indeed. Qualities suitable to the wife 
of Abner Fownes.” 

He drew himself up to the utmost of his scanty 
height, making, as well, the most of his breadth. 
He resembled, Carmel thought, a dropsical pouter 
pigeon. 

“The mistress of my home—er—mansion,” he 
amended, “would occupy enviable position. Ex¬ 
tremely. Looked up to. Envied. Arbiter of local 
society. Ease, comfort—luxury. Everything money 
can buy. . . . Travel. Yes, indeed. . . . Clothes 
suitable to her station and mine. . . . Women are 
fond of clothes. Jewels. Amply able to provide 
my wife with jewels.” 

Carmel was breathless. Her heart beat in a manner 
to cause her alarm lest it outdo itself. Her scalp 
prickled. She wondered if something physically un¬ 
pleasant were going to happen—like fainting. 

“Enviable picture,” he said, expansively. “Suffi¬ 
cient to attract any woman. Be pointed out as Abner 
Fownes’s wife. Women take pride in their husbands. 
Husband of a personage.” At this he swelled to his 
utmost. 

“I have studied you,” he said, in a voice of one 
coming to the end of an oration. “I have found you 
in all ways capable of filling the position of my wife. 
Er—you would be a credit to me. Yes, indeed. 
End all your difficulties. Satisfy every whim. What 
more can anybody ask?” 

He stared at her pompously, but with a horrid 

120 


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hunger in his eyes, stared as if waiting for an 
answer. 

“I am asking you,” he said, “to become Mrs. 
Abner Fownes.” 

She gasped to hear the unthinkable put into words. 
It had not seemed possible to her that it could be put 
into words. It was the sort of thing one hinted at, 
made use of double entendre to convey. But he 
dragged it out into the light and gloated over it. 
He insisted on stating it baldly. . . . She bore it as 
she would endure some shock, quivered under the 
affront of it, caught her breath, grasped at her heart 
as if to quiet it with her fingers. For moments she 
could not move nor speak. She was engulfed in 
material horror of the thing. It was as if she were 
immersed in some cold, clammy, clinging, living fluid 
—a fluid endowed with gristly life. 

Suddenly she found herself upon her feet, speaking 
words. The words came from subconscious depths, 
not directed by intellect or by will, but by the deep- 
lying soul, by the living, indestructible thing which 
was herself. Disgust emanated from her. 

“You toad!” she heard herself say. “You white, 
dreadful toad! You dare to say such words to me! 
You dare to sit there appraising me, coveting me! 
You ask me to be your wife—your wife! ... You 
are unspeakably horrible—can't you see how horrible 
you are?” She heard her voice arguing with him, 
trying to impress him with his own horribleness. 
“You dreadful, fat little creature! A credit to you! 
. . . I can think of no woman so low, so degraded, 
9 121 


CONTRABAND 


so unnatural as to be a credit to what you are. A 
woman of the streets would refuse you. Your touch 
would be death to her soul—to what fragment of 
soul she retained. . . . How dare you insult me 
so? . . .” The words would not stop, the dreadful 
words. She did not wish to utter them, knew their 
utterance served no purpose, but they continued to 
flow as water from a broken spout. She rent and 
tore him, holding him up to the light of the stars 
for himself to see. It was a dreadful thing to do 
to any human being; to sink one’s claws into his body, 
searching for and finding and rending the soul. 

She saw him turn the color of his vest; saw him 
shrink, compress within himself, crumple, sag like a 
punctured football. She saw an ugly glint in his 
little, narrowed eyes; understood how she had put 
upon him the supreme affront of stripping him of his 
pretense and showing him to himself as he knew he 
was. She stood him before his own eyes, stark, 
horribly vivid; showed him secrets he concealed 
even from himself. Yet it was not Carmel who did 
this thing, but some uncontrollable force within her, 
some force fighting the battle of womanhood. . . . 
He got unsteadily to his feet and backed away from 
her mouthing. He stumbled, recovered, felt behind 
him for the door. 

“Damn you!” he cried shrilly. “Damn you! . . . 
You—you’ll suffer for this. . . .” 

Then he was gone and she found herself kneeling 
with her face upon the seat of her chair, shaken by 
sobs. 


122 


CHAPTER XI 


TN the morning Carmel Lee had made up her mind. 
-*■ She did not know she had made up her mind, but 
it was none the less true. Her mind was of the sort 
which makes itself up upon slight provocation and 
then permits its owner to reason and argue and apply 
the pure light of reason to the problem in hand—a 
sort of ex post facto deliberation. As may have been 
noted, the salient characteristic of this young woman 
was a certain impetuosity, a stubborn impulsiveness. 
Once her mind made itself up to a certain course of 
action, nothing short of an upheaval of nature could 
turn her from it. But, notwithstanding, she con¬ 
sidered herself to be of a schooled deliberation. She 
believed she had impressed this deliberation upon her¬ 
self, and was confident she reasoned out every matter 
of importance gravely and logically. 

Now, having determined just what she would do 
about the cache of whisky she had discovered, she 
sat down before her desk to determine what it was 
best to do. 

So enraged, so shaken, had she been by her 
encounter with Abner Fownes the evening before, 
that it was necessary for her to take action against 

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somebody or something. She could not demolish 
Fownes, and nobody else was handy, so she turned 
to the whisky and vented her anger and disgust 
upon that. 

While she sat before her desk pretending to herself 
that she was deliberating, Evan Bartholomew Pell 
came into the office, nodded curtly, and dropped in 
his chair. Carmel, of a sudden, seized paper and 
commenced to write. As she set down word after 
word, sentence after sentence, she became uneasily 
aware of some distracting influence. Upon looking 
up she identified this extraneous force as the eyes of 
Evan Pell. He was staring at her fixedly. 

“You forgot your spectacles this morning,” she 
said, sharply, to cover her embarrassment. 

“I have no spectacles,” he said, dryly. 

“What became of them?” 

“They—er—disappeared during the barbarous epi¬ 
sode of the other day/’ 

“You have no others?” 

“None.” 

“How can you work without them?” 

“I find,” he said, “they are not essential. I was 
about to discard them in any event.” He paused. “It 
was clear to me,” he said, simply, “that a scholarly 
appearance was not necessary to me in my new walk 
of life.” 

He said this so casually, with such good faith and 
simplicity, that Carmel saw how little he realized the 
absurdity of it. It demonstrated something of the 
straightforwardness of the man, something simple 

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and childlike in him. . . . Carmel turned back 
to her desk with a warmer feeling of friendship 
toward Evan. There was something engaging, ap¬ 
pealing about the artificially dried, cloistered, egoistic 
man. 

“At any rate,” she said, presently, again aware 
of his eyes, “you seem perfectly able to stare at me, 
glasses or no glasses.” 

“I was staring at you,” he admitted, with discon¬ 
certing directness. 

“Well, of all things! . . . Why?” 

“Because,” he said, “you present an interesting 
problem.” 

“Indeed! . . * What problem, if you please?” 

There was no trace of self-consciousness in his 
answer. It was direct, not made with humorous 
intent, nor as a man of the world might have uttered 
similar words. It issued from profound depths of 
ignorance of life and of the customs and habits of 
life. 

“I find,” he said, “that I think about you a great 
deal. Yes. ... I find my thoughts taken up with 
you at most inopportune moments. I am even able 
to visualize you. Very queer. Only last evening, 
when I should have been otherwise occupied, I sud¬ 
denly aroused myself to find I had been giving you 
minute consideration for half an hour. I may even 
say that I derived a certain pleasure from the exer¬ 
cise. It was startling, if I may use so strong a word. 
Doubtless there is some cause for such a mental 
phenomenon. . . . Will you believe me, Miss Lee, I 

125 


CONTRABAND 


was perfectly able to see you as if you were in the 
room with me. I watched you move about. I could 
see the changing expressions upon your face. . . . 
And when I realized how I was frittering away my 
time, and set about resolutely to take up the business 
in hand, I could do so only with the greatest diffi¬ 
culty. Actually, I did so with regret, and thereafter 
found concentration extremely difficult. . . . There¬ 
fore I have been sitting here, studying you with the 
utmost care to discover, if I can, the reason for these 
things.” 

“And have you discovered it?” Carmel asked, a 
trifle breathlessly. 

He shook his head. “Undoubtedly you are pleas¬ 
ing to the eye,” he said, “but I must have encountered 
other people who are equally pleasing. I must con¬ 
fess to being at a loss for an answer.” 

Carmel experienced a wave of sympathy. She 
hoped he would never discover the cause of the phe¬ 
nomenon, and fancied it quite likely he would never 
comprehend it. Mingled with her sympathy was a 
sense of guilt. She reviewed her conduct toward 
Evan Pell and could discover no action on her part 
which justified a feeling of guilt, yet it persisted. 
This queer, pedantic, crackling man was attracted to 
her, was, perhaps, on the verge of falling in love with 
her. . . . He was coming to life! She paused to 
wonder what sort of man he would be if he really 
came to life; if he sloughed off his shell of pedantry 
and stood disclosed without disguise. Perhaps it 
would be good for him to fall in love, no matter how 

126 


CONTRABAND 


vainly. It might be unpleasant for both of them, 
but, she determined, if he did find out what ailed 
him, she would be patient and gentle with him and 
see to it the hurt she would inflict should be as slight 
as she could make it. . . . It is to be noted her mind 
was already made up. Evan had no chance what¬ 
ever. Already she had refused him, kindly, gently, 
but firmly. ... It was upsetting. 

“Probably,” she said, with an artificial laugh, “it 
is something you have eaten.” 

“I have made no alteration in my diet,” he said, 
and then, with the air of one who wrenches himself 
away from an engrossing subject, “There seems to 
be an unusual supply of liquor in Gibeon to-day.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I’ve noted a dozen men on the street this morn¬ 
ing who are indicative of the fact.” 

“Where do they get it?” 

As she turned to ask the question, she saw his 
face change, saw a glint of determination in his really 
fine eyes; saw his chin jut forward and the muscles 
just under his jaw bunch into little white knots. “I 
don’t know,” he said, “but I’m going to find out.” 

Here was a new man, a man she had not seen. 
This new man was as revealing as that indomitable 
man she had seen fighting a futile fight with Deputy 
Jenney. 

“If I can find out who dispenses liquor in town,” 
he said, “that will be a step toward discovering where 
the dispensers get it. It will be climbing the first 
round of the ladder.” 


127 


CONTRABAND 


For an instant she was about to tell him what she 
had discovered, but it was vanity which stopped her. 
It was her discovery, her “beat,” and she wanted to 
surprise everybody with it. 

‘‘Whose business is it to stop this liquor traffic?'’ 
she asked. 

“First, it is the business of the law-enforcement 
officials of this county—the sheriff and his sub¬ 
ordinates. This is a prohibition state and has been 
for years. Second, it is the business of Federal en¬ 
forcement officials.” 

“Who, doubtless, are few and far between in this 
region.” 

“Yes. To put a stop to the thing by legal means, 
we must have the co-operation of the sheriff.” 

“And there is no sheriff,” said Carmel. 

“Er—removed by the liquor interests for cause,” 
said Evan, dryly. “If I am a judge of appearances, 
the sheriff’s office as it is now constituted is not 
likely to give the rum smugglers a maximum of 
uneasiness.” 

“Mr. Pell, when there is a vacancy in the office 
of sheriff, how can that vacancy be filled?” 

“I was reading the Compiled Statutes of the state 
last night with that point in mind. . . . The Gover¬ 
nor may appoint a successor to fill the unexpired 
term of office.” 

Carmel turned back to her work, but once more 
faced Evan abruptly. “Have you noticed an un¬ 
usual number of men going up to Lancelot Bangs’s 
photograph gallery to-day?” she asked. 

128 


CONTRABAND 


‘‘No. Why do you ask ?” 

She shrugged her shoulders. “I wondered.” 

He eyed her a moment, then shrugged his shoul¬ 
ders. “I shall give Mr. Bangs my attention,” he 
said, and arose to leave the office. 

Carmel arose, too, impulsively. “Please be cau¬ 
tious, be careful. ... I could never forgive my¬ 
self if anything happened to you.” 

For an instant his eyes glowed, color mounted to 
his cheeks. Then a look of astonishment, of sudden 
apprehension, and of confusion succeeded it. He 
turned and fled abruptly. 

For an hour Carmel continued to write. She com¬ 
pleted a circumstantial account of the finding of the 
liquor cache , omitting only the picking up of the 
brass match box. It was intuition rather than judg¬ 
ment which caused this omission. Having com¬ 
pleted this news story, she composed a three-quarter- 
column editorial upon the subject, and therein she 
walked a more dangerous path than in the mere re¬ 
counting of the news itself. She ventured into realms 
of conjecture. 

First she touched the traffic itself, then upon the 
apparent magnitude of the industry locally, and then, 
which was an unsafe thing to do, and unwise, she 
pointed out with logic that such a huge business re¬ 
quired capital, organization, and intelligence. She 
gave it as the opinion of the Free Press that here was 
no affair of a few small bad men, but a real con¬ 
spiracy to break the laws of the land, to the end of a 
huge profit. She named no names, because here con- 

129 


CONTRABAND 


jecture was forced to pause, but she set afloat upon 
the current of gossip a raft of suspicion. Who in 
Gibeon was engaged in this conspiracy? Who was 
at the head of it? ... At the end she asked one 
sentence: 

“Find the men who hid this store of whisky in the 
woods and you will have the murderers of Sheriff 
Churchill.” 

It was the first time a name had been given the 
disappearance of the sheriff; the first time in print 
that the word murder had been attached to it. 

Carmel was well satisfied with herself. She took 
the story and the editorial to Tubal, with directions 
to set at once. 

Ten minutes later he appeared in the door, the 
manuscript in his left hand, while with his right he 
transferred ink from his fingers to his face. 

“Lady,” he said, “be you serious about printin’ 
this here?” 

“I certainly am.” 

“All of it?” 

“Every word, sentence, paragraph, and punctua¬ 
tion mark.” 

“My Gawd! . . . Say, Lady, now lookit here! 
This here thing is loaded with dynamite, nitrogly¬ 
cerin, TNT, and mustard gas. The dum thing’s 
apt to go off right on the printin’ press and blow the 
whole shebang to smithereens. If I was to drop a 
page onto the floor— whoof! . . . Better think it 
over.” 

“I’ve thought it over.” 

, 130 


CONTRABAND 


“Um! . . . It’s funny what folks calls thinkin’ 
sometimes! Hain’t despondent, be ye?” 

“No. Why?” 

“ ’Cause, if ye be, and kind of want to shuffle 
off’n this mortal coil, you kin pick out easier ’n’ 
pleasanter ways of doin’ it. There’s layin’ down 
with your head on the railroad track, f’r instance.” 

“Are you afraid, Tubal?” 

“Bet your life,” said Tubal, unabashed. “Can’t 
say I git so much joy out of life that it makes me 
go around hollerin' and singin’, but what there is of 
it. I kind of like. When you’re dead you can’t chaw 
tobacker. Ruther chaw than twiddle a harp. Uh 
huh. Hain’t no printer’s ink to smell in heaven.” 

“But maybe you won’t go to heaven, Tubal.” 

“Bound to,” he said, gravely. “Got it all figgered 
out. Says suthin’ in the Bible about the Lord ’u’d 
rather herd in one sinner to heaven than ninety-nine 
righteous fellers, don’t it? Wa-af, I’m the sinner 
he was calc’latin’ on. When he goes to herd me in, 
I hain’t goin’ to put up no resistance whatever. 
Yas ’m I’m safe to pass them pearly gates on the 
run.” 

“Tubal, do you ever drink?” 

“Frequent—but not too frequent.” 

“Where do you get it?” 

“Um! . . . Now there’s a question, Lady. Now 
hain’t it ? Want a feller to do me a favor like gittin’ 
liquor fer me in a dry and thirsty land, and then fer 
me to go V tattle on him? Uh-uh, Lady. Can’t 
be did.” 


131 


CONTRABAND 


“But you’re loyal to me, aren’t you, Tubal?” 

“Lady, seems like I’d come dost to lettin’ wild 
hosses tromple onto me fer you.” 

“Then why not help me when I’m trying to find 
out about this liquor business ?” 

“Best help I kin give ye is to warn you to leave it 
alone. Churchill, he meddled with it.” 

“I’m going to find out who killed him.” 

“Lady, you’re runnin’ up a tree that’s bound to be 
struck by lightnin’. . . . Listen, there’s jest you ’n’ 
Simmy ’n’ that perfesser feller. Count us up—four. 
What chanct we got?” 

“Against whom, Tubal?” 

“The ones we hain’t got no chanct ag’in’,” he 
said noncommittally. “I dunno, Lady, and if I 
knowed I wouldn’t tell. Men that hain’t afraid to 
do away with a sheriff wouldn’t come to a sweat over 
disposin’ of a printer like me.” 

“It’s the business of a newspaper-” 

“To make a livin’ for the owners of it and to keep 
out of libel suits. Stick to that, Lady. Hain’t this 
sheet in a bad enough way without your tyin’ a rock 
to it and throwin’ it in the river?” 

“We’re wasting time,” said Carmel. 

“You’re bound and determined to print this here?” 

“I’ll print that if it’s the last act of my life.” 

“Wa-al, if that’s the way you feel. . . . Mebby 
it will be, mebby not, seems as though.” He walked 
to the door, and there turned. “I own a book of 
synonyms,” he said. 

“Yes, Tubal.” 


132 



CONTRABAND 


“Goin’ to throw it away.” 

“Why?” 

“ ’Tain’t correct.” 

“How is it wrong?” 

“Don’t give woman as a synonym for lunatic ” he 
said, and disappeared abruptly. 


CHAPTER XII 


D EPUTY JENNEY, with a crumpled copy of 
the Free Press in his hand, rushed into Abner 
Fownes’s office—for once omitting the formality of 
rapping on the door. He threw the paper upon the 
desk and stood huge, bristling, speechless. 

“What’s this? . . . What’s this?’’ Abner de¬ 
manded, sharply. 

“Read it. Read it and see. . . . Hell’s busted 
loose in the henhouse.” 

Abner smoothed out the paper and read. His face 
did not change, but his little eyes glowed dully, with 
a light not pleasant to see, one that suggested pent-up 
heat, a compression of scorching, searing forces capa¬ 
ble of awful explosion. He read the story of the 
finding of the whisky cache from beginning to end; 
then reread it, missing no word, no suggestion. 
Jenney directed him to the editorial page with its 
conjectures and comment. For some moments he 
did not speak, but stared at his desk top with those 
dull-glowing eyes until one might have expected 
to see wisps of smoke arising from the spot they 
touched. 

Strangely enough, the thoughts of Abner Fownes 
were not upon the words he had read in the news¬ 
paper, but on the writer of them. He was thinking 

134 


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of her apart from this journalistic bomb which she 
had set off under the feet of Gibeon. Presently he 
would give that his consideration, but now Carmel 
Lee stood in the midst of his thoughts, and he reached 
out to engulf her in his hatred. He hated her with 
a burning, aching, hungry intensity—with the hatred 
of a vain man who has been humiliated and stripped 
stark of his vanity. The very words she had used, 
but, more than those, the expression of her eyes, 
was with him now. He watched her and listened 
to her again, and felt himself shrinking and deflating 
before her anger. . . . She despised him—him, Ab¬ 
ner Fownes! Despised him! And he hated her for 
despising him. He hated her for stripping away so 
ruthlessly the mantle of pretense he had erected be¬ 
tween himself and his own eys. She had humiliated 
him before his own soul, and his soul was sick with 
the shame of it. 

For years he had lived with his pretense until it 
had become a part of himself, like the grafted branch 
upon the sterile tree. None in Gibeon had gainsaid 
his own estimate of himself. In his small realm he 
had been supreme—until he had come himself to 
believe his own pretense. . . . He hid Abner Fownes 
from himself studiously; allowed him to admire him¬ 
self, to look upon himself as good and great. . . . 
In those wakeful moments of his soul when it opened 
its eyes and saw him as he was, he suffered acutely— 
and applied the ever-ready anesthetic. 

Now this girl, to whom he had grandly thrown his 
handkerchief like some Oriental potentate, had dared 

135 


CONTRABAND 


to snatch away his disguise and to destroy it utterly. 
Never again could he wear it, because he would feel 
her eyes piercing it. Such a garment is only to be 
worn when there is none in all the world to recognize 
that it is a disguise. Once a single soul lifts the mask 
and gazes upon the reality lurking within, and the 
thing is done. Abner Fownes knew Carmel saw 
him as he was—not by sure knowledge, grounded 
upon fact, perhaps, but by intuition. Now he would 
forever question, and his question would be: Did 
others see him as he was? Was the adulation show¬ 
ered on him a pretense? Was the attitude people 
maintained before him a sham, an ironical sham? 
Was the world laughing at and despising him, as 
Carmel Lee despised him? ... It was unbearably 
bitter to a man whose natural element was vanity; 
who had existed in vanity, breathed it, fed upon it, 
for a score of years. 

It is no wonder he hated her! . . . He no longer 
desired her. His one thought was to revenge him¬ 
self upon her, to humiliate her publicly as she had 
humiliated him before his own eyes. He wanted to 
degrade her, to besmirch her, to defile her so that 
her soul would cry out with horror at sight of her¬ 
self, as his soul revolted at the thing she had con¬ 
jured up before his own eyes. His was not that 
hatred which kills. It was more cruel than that, more 
cowardly, more treacherous, more horrible. His was 
the hatred which could satisfy itself only by setting 
Carmel in the pillory; by damning her body and soul 
and then by exhibiting her to a taunting world. . . . 

136 


CONTRABAND 


He wrenched his eyes away from his desk, his 
thoughts away from his hatred. 

“What d’you mean by coming here with this, you 
fool?” he demanded, savagely. 

Deputy Jenney reared back on his heels from the 
shock of it and goggled at Abner. 

“Want to advertise to the world that I care a 
damn what she prints about whisky? Want the 
town to clack and question and wonder what I’ve 
got to do with it?” 

“I—I thought you’d want to know.” 

“I’d find out soon enough.” 

“What you aim to do about it?” 

“Do. . . . Get on record as soon as I can. Con¬ 
gratulate the Free Press on its courage and public 
spirit.” 

“But she’ll pull somethin’ down onto us—her and 
that perfessor. Attractin’ notice to Gibeon. Fust 
we know, we’ll be havin’ Federal officers here, and 
then what?” 

“We’ve fiddled long enough. . . . We’ll petition 
the Governor to appoint a sheriff—before somebody 
else gets his ear.” 

“Me?” said Jenney. 

“I guess folks ’ll have to stomach you,” said Abner. 

“But what about that danged paper? No tellin’ 
what she’ll hit on if she goes nosin’ around. Any¬ 
how, she’ll git folks all het up and excited.” 

“Well, what would you do about it?” Abner 
snapped. 

“Me? I’d git me about a dozen fellers and fill 
10 137 


CONTRABAND 


’em with booze and give ’em sledge hammers. Then 
I’d turn ’em loose on that printin’ office, and when 
they got through there wouldn’t be enough left of 
it to print a ticket to a church sociable with.” 

“Um! . . .” 

“That ’u’d settle that” 

“I suppose you’d lead them down yourself?” 

“You bet.” 

“I always thought you were a fool, Jenney. Why 
not stand by the town jump and holler that you’re a 
whisky runner? . . . And you planning to be sher¬ 
iff. . . .” Abner waggled his head. “This is the kind 
of brains I have to trust to,” he said, sourly. 

“Hain’t nobody else to do it,” said Jenney, de¬ 
fensively. 

“Seems like Peewee Bangs might be kind of ir¬ 
ritated by a newspaper piece like this—and you can 
trust Peewee to keep in the background, too.” 

Jenney slapped his leg, “And he’s got a bunch of 
plug-uglies handy, too.” 

Abner motioned to the door. “Get out,” he said, 
“and don’t come near me again till I send for you. 
I don’t want the smell of you on my clothes when I 
walk down the street.” 

Deputy Jenney walked down the road and pres¬ 
ently turned upon Main Street, which would carry 
him past the Free Press office. He paused at sight 
of a knot of people gathered before its window, and 
joined them. Carmel had carried enterprise—or 
indiscretion—to its ultimate. On a table in the 
window stood a quart bottle of Scotch whisky. Be- 

138 


CONTRABAND 


hind it stood a placard announcing it to be the evi¬ 
dence in the case—a veritable bottle from the smug¬ 
gler’s cache in the woods. Jenney ground his teeth, 
and, seeing Evan Bartholomew Pell seated at his 
work, saw red for an instant. He was an impulsive 
man, and temper often carried him somewhat beyond 
the boundaries where good judgment reigned. It is 
not easy to prophesy what he would have done had 
not a hand rested on his arm. 

“Whoo! . . . Easy there! So-ooo!” whispered 
a voice, and, looking down, he saw the sharp, wolf¬ 
like features of the hunchback, Peewee Bangs. 

“Interestin’ exhibit,” said Bangs. “Kind of stole 
a march on the sheriff’s office.” He laughed a thin, 
shrill laugh. 

“Come away from here. I got suthin’ to talk to 
ye about,” said Jenney. 

“That,” said Peewee, “makes two of us.” 

“What’s he got to say about it?” Peewee asked 
when they had turned the next corner and were in a 
deserted side street. 

“He don’t want it to happen ag’in.” 

“Don’t wonder at it. Him ’n’ me agrees.” 

“It hain’t goin’ to,” said Jenney, meaningly. 

“So. . . . Now, f’r instance. ... You listen, 
Dep’ty, too many folks disappearin’ and onaccounted 
for is goin’ to raise curiosity. Surer ’n’ shootin’. 
. . . More especial if it’s a woman.” 

“No disappearing figgered on. . . . Anyhow, I’m 
goin’ to be appointed sheriff by the Governor. . . . 
Naw. This here’s simple. Jest smashin’.” 

\ 139 


CONTRABAND 


“Like you done to the perfessor? . . . Gritty, 
wa’n’t he? Never kin tell, kin ye? ... I tell ye, 
Jenney, that perfessor’s a feller to figger on. 
Shouldn't be s’prised if he got to be dangerous. . . . 
I wonder how come she to tie up to him." 

“ 'Tain’t that kind of smashin’. He says fer you 
to git a dozen fellers and fill 'em full, and then turn 
'em loose on that printin’ shop with sledge hammers. 
Kind of tinker with it, like. Git the idee?" 

“So-oo! . . . Me, eh? I can’t see me leadin' no 
sich percession down Main Street. Hain’t achin’ to 
git the public eye focused on me any. Talk enough 
goin’ around now." 

“Fix it anyhow you like—only fix it." 

“What if the sheriff’s office is called to put down 
the disturbance?" 

“It wouldn’t git much result, seems as though," 
said the Deputy, humorously. 

Peewee Bangs walked leisurely back to reconnoiter 
the Free Press office, and, having satisfied himself, 
clambered into his rickety car and drove out of 
town in the general direction of the Lakeside Hotel. 

Carmel Lee was seated at her desk, endeavoring 
to appear oblivious to the excitement outside and to 
the air of hostility within. Everybody disapproved. 
Even Simmy, the printer’s devil, went about with a 
look of apprehension, and stopped now and then to 
peer at her reproachfully. Tubal blustered and mut¬ 
tered. He had appeared that morning with an auto¬ 
matic shotgun under his arm, which he stood against 
the case from which he was sticking type. 

140 


CONTRABAND 

“Going hunting?” Carmel asked, with pretended 
innocence. 

“Self-pertection,” said Tubal, “is the fust six laws 
of nature, and the bulk of all the rest of ’em.” 

“You’re trying to frighten me,” Carmel said, “and 
you can’t do it. I won’t be frightened.” 

“Different here. I be frightened. . . . Now go 
back and write some more of them dynamite pieces, 
Lady, and after the next issue of this here rag comes 
out—if it ever does—I’m goin’ to throw up breast¬ 
works and see if I can’t borrow me a machine 
gun.” 

“Fiddlesticks!” said Carmel. 

Evan Pell did not refer to her work until she in¬ 
vited his comment. Then he turned his eyes upon 
her with something of the old superciliousness in 
them and said, dryly, “What is done is done.” 

“I gather you don’t approve.” 

“I most certainly do not ” he said. 

“Why,” he countered, “did you not discuss this 
step with me ?” 

“Why should I?” she answered, sharply. 

“In order,” he said, “to receive an intelligent idea 
of the course of action to take.” He said this with 
flat finality, and turned his back. Thereafter Carmel 
sulked. 

She had expected some result—beneficial. Just 
what result she had not envisaged. Perhaps she had 
expected some public ovation, some sign that Gibeon 
sided with her in her efforts to the end of law and 
order. If she had hoped for this, she was disap- 

141 


CONTRABAND 


pointed. Gibeon buzzed with excitement, whispered 
in corners, gathered in knots, but, such of its in¬ 
habitants as found reason to address her, studiously 
ignored the subject. Gibeon was manifestly uneasy. 

If merely the selling of newspapers was her object, 
she accomplished that. The edition was exhausted 
before ten o’clock in the morning. No new flood of 
advertising came to take advantage of the increase 
in circulation. . . . She came to doubt her own judg¬ 
ment, and to wonder if she had not acted again on 
impulse. It was an unpleasant feeling—to know 
that those upon whom she most relied regarded her 
conduct with hostility. 

Nevertheless, she was determined to persist. How, 
with what material, she did not know. She grew 
stubborn under opposition, and resolved that no issue 
of the Free Press should appear in which the thing 
should not be followed up. 

Evan Pell got up from his place and went out with¬ 
out a word. Presently she heard Tubal banging 
about, preparatory to going home, and then she was 
alone. She did not like the feeling of aloneness. 
The thing had worn upon her more than she realized, 
and her nerve ends jangled. She was conscious of a 
rising discomfort of mind, which resolved itself into 
apprehension as dusk fell and shadows filtered in to 
flood the corners of the room with blackness. Her 
mind persisted in thinking of Sheriff Churchill, of 
the suddenness, the completeness of his disappearing. 
He had stepped to his door—and from that instant 
the world had lost him to sight. The mystery of it, 

142 


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the cruel efficiency of it, caused her to shudder. If 
they— they —dared lay hands upon the chief official 
of the county, what would cause them to hesitate to 
deal with her in like manner ? 

She got up hastily, put away her work, and locked 
the office. It was not until she was in the well-lighted 
office of the hotel that a feeling of security came to 
her again. Then she laughed at herself, but the 
laughter was a pretense and she knew it to be pre¬ 
tense. . . . Suddenly she thought of Evan Pell. 
What of him? If there were danger, was not his 
danger greater than hers ? Already he was the victim 
of more than a threat. 

Her appetite for supper was far from robust and 
she was glad of the quiet and security of her room. 
There she endeavored to read, and so passed away 
the hours until her watch told her it was an hour 
from midnight. She laid down her book, with a 
mind to retiring, when there came a rush of foot¬ 
steps in the corridor without and a pounding upon 
her door. 

“Lady! Lady! . . . Lemmein! Lemme in, quick! 
. . . It’s Simmy.” 

She snatched open the door, and Simmy, face 
splotched with ink as it had been hours before, 
plunged into the room. 

“They’re cornin’!” he said, so excitedly he could 
scarcely articulate. “They’re cornin’ with sledge 
hammers! Quick! They’re dum nigh there.” 

She heard herself speak as though it were an¬ 
other individual. As for herself, she was singularly 

143 


CONTRABAND 


calm, even cool. It had come—the emergency. What 
was it ? What did it bring to her ? 

“Who is coming with sledge hammers ?’’ she asked. 

“Mebby a dozen of 'em—drunk and staggerin’." 

“What are they going to do?" 

“Smash the office to smithereens. Bust the presses. 
Knock everythin’ to pieces, so’s we can’t never print 
no more.” 

“How do you know ? Who told you ?" 

“I was—hidin’ behind a fence." He neglected to 
state that it was for the purpose of feloniously ob¬ 
taining watermelons. “And I heard ’em talkin’. 
Peewee Bangs was givin’ ’em licker and tellin’ ’em 
what to do. . . . Oh, what be we goin' to do?" 

Carmel had no idea, except that she was going to 
do something to avert this destruction which would 
spell ruin to her and her paper. Not pausing for hat 
or wrap, she tore open the door and rushed down the 
stairs into the dark street. 


144 


CHAPTER XIII 


I T is much to be doubted if violence and scenes of 
violence are as abhorrent to the so-called gentler 
sex as it is popular to pretend. There lurks in a cor¬ 
ner of the mind an impish suggestion that a woman, 
underneath a pretense of dismay or horror, enjoys 
the spectacle of a fight as much as a man. This 
polite supposition regarding women has barred them 
from much pleasure in watching the antagonist sex 
batter itself about. Next to dogs and line fences, 
women have caused more fights than any other item 
of creation—they should be permitted to enjoy the 
fruits of their activities. . . . Women are more 
quarrelsome than men. This is because they know 
words will not merge into fists—or at worst into the 
vicarious fists of husbands or brothers. It is not 
unthinkable that the attribute of the ably acrimonious 
tongue would atrophy and disappear from the fem¬ 
inine part of the human race within a generation or 
two if it were permitted to resolve into action rather 
than barbed innuendo. A field for some rising 
reformer! 

Consequently Carmel was not shocked at being in¬ 
volved in such proceedings. She was angry, appre¬ 
hensive. Her overshadowing sensation was one of 
impotence. If men were coming to wreck her news- 

145 


CONTRABAND 


paper, what could she do about it ? It was humiliat¬ 
ing to be so ineffective in a crisis like this. A man, 
any man, would be more efficient than she. 

The streets were deserted. A quick glance showed 
her the attacking force—if attacking force existed 
save in Simmy’s dime-novel-tainted imagination— 
had not yet made itself visible. . . . With the boy at 
her heels she ran in most undignified manner to the 
Free Press's door, admitted herself quickly, and 
lighted a light. 

“Well,” she said, breathlessly, “here we are, 
Simmy.” 

“Yes, ’m,” said Simmy with singular helpfulness. 

“I shall call the police,” Carmel said, taking refuge 
in that expedient of the law-abiding. She turned the 
handle of the old-fashioned telephone with which 
Gibeon is afflicted and gave the number of the Sher¬ 
iff’s office. A drowsy voice answered presently. 

“This is the Free Press ” said Carmel. “Send 
some deputies at once. Men are coming to wreck this 
place with sledge hammers.” 

“Aw, go on!” said the voice. “Ye can’t play no 
jokes on me.” 

“This is not a joke. It is Miss Lee speaking. I 
want police protection.” 

“Jest a minute,” said the voice, and then another, 
heavier voice took its place. 

“Dep’ty Jenney speakin’. What’s wanted?” 

“This is Miss Lee. A crowd of drunken men are 
coming to mob this office. Send men here instantly.” 
“Um! . . . Somebody’s jokin’ye, Miss Lee. This 

146 


CONTRABAND 


here’s a peaceful, law-abidin’ community. Better go 
back to bed and fergit it.” 

“Will you send men here at once?” 

“Now, ma’am, that hain’t possible. Can’t roust 
men out of bed and send ’em traipsin’ all over jest 
on account of a woman gittin’ upset. You go back 
to bed. Nothin’ hain’t goin’ to happen. Nothin’ ever 
does.” He hung up the receiver. 

It was obvious. Carmel knew. There was col¬ 
lusion between the sheriff’s office and whoever had set 
a party of drunken irresponsibles upon her. No evi¬ 
dence was needed to demonstrate this to her. It was, 
and she stored the fact away in her mind venge fully. 

“Where’s Tubal? Where’s Mr. Pell?” she asked 
Simmy. 

“Dunno. Hain’t seen nuther of ’em. Nobody 
never sees nobody when they need them. . . . Oh, 
what we goin’ to do? What we goin’ to do?” 

He ran into the back room—the composing room 
—as if he hoped to find some workable course of 
action lying there ready to be picked up. He was 
frightened. Carmel could not remember ever hav¬ 
ing seen a boy quite so terrified. Perhaps the ink 
blotches on his face made him seem paler than he 
actually was! But he stayed. The way was open 
for him to desert her, but the thought did not seem 
to occur to him. Ignorant, not overly bright, there 
nevertheless glowed in Simmy a spark of loyalty, and 
Carmel perceived it and, even in that anxious mo¬ 
ment, treasured it. 

Presently he came out of the press room, eyes 

147 


CONTRABAND 


gleaming with terror, shock head bristling, dragging 
after him, by its barrel, Tubal’s automatic shotgun. 

“By gum! The’ shan’t nobody tetch you, Lady, 
’less ’n it’s over my dead body.” His voice quavered 
as he spoke, but Carmel knew her one defender would 
remain stanch so long as the breath of life remained 
in him. 

“Simmy,” she said, “come here.” 

He came and stood beside her chair. His head 
was scarcely higher than Carmel’s, seated in her 
chair. 

“Simmy,” she said, “you do like me, don’t you?” 

“Gosh!” Simmy said, worship in his eyes and 
voice. 

She put her hands on his shoulders and kissed his 
smudgy cheek. “There, I think you’d better run 
along now, Simmy. They—they might hurt you.” 

“I’m a-goin’ to stay right straight here,” he said. 
“Oh, Lady! What’s that? Listen to that! They’re 
a-comin. Sure’s shootin’, they’re a-comin’.” 

“Put out the lights,” said Carmel. 

They stood in darkness. Carmel stretched out her 
hand and took the shotgun from Simmy’s grip. The 
feel of the cold barrel was distasteful to her. She 
felt a sense of outrage that she should be compelled 
to come in contact with an event such as this, an 
event of sordidness and violence. This was a reac¬ 
tion. For the moment she conceived of herself as 
doing something which, in the words of her grand¬ 
mother, was unladylike. Even then she smiled at it. 
This was succeeded by determination. Doubtless her 

148 


CONTRABAND 


great-grandmothers had defended their homes from 
the raids of savage Indians. They had not been too 
delicate to handle firearms in the defense of their 
lives and their homes. Why should she be less reso¬ 
lute than they. . . . There was the story of the great- 
great-aunt who had killed an intruding savage with 
an ax! . . . If those things were heroic in pioneer 
days, why were they so unthinkable to-day? If 
women could display resolution, high courage, and 
perform awful acts of fortitude in 1771, why was 
not the woman of 1921 capable of conduct as 
praiseworthy ? 

Then, too, there was a specious unreality about the 
affair, something of play acting. Carmel could not 
dispel the reflection that it was not so. She was 
making believe. No drunken men were actually ap¬ 
proaching with sledge hammers. Her plant and 
her person were in no danger. It was playing with 
other toys substituted for dolls. She drew closer 
to her the cold barrel of the toy she clutched in her 
fingers. 

“The safety's on,” said Simmy, practically. 

“The safety?” 

“Yes, ’m, so’s nobody kin shoot himself. You 
have to take off the safety before the trigger ’ll pull.” 

“How do you do it?” 

“You push this here dingus,” said Simmy. 

Carmel promptly pushed it. 

Far down the street she heard a single shout, a 
few maudlin words of a lumber-camp song. She 
stepped to the door and peered up the shadowy thor- 

149 


CONTRABAND 


oughfare. Across the Square and perhaps two blocks 
away she made out a number of dark figures, strag¬ 
gling toward her in midstreet. She could not count 
accurately, but estimated there were ten or a dozen 
of them. She crouched in the recess of the doorway 
and waited. Unreality was dispelled now. She was 
cognizant of fact—literal, visible, potent fact. 

Her sensation was not fear, but it was unpleasant. 
It resembled nothing in her experience so much as the 
feeling one has in the pit of his stomach when de¬ 
scending rapidly in an elevator. She could feel her 
knees tremble. Always she had heard this spoken of 
as a symbol of cowardice, and she tried to restrain 
their shaking. . . . The men approached noisily. 

“Light the lights,” she said to Simmy when the 
men were some fifty yards distant. This was instinct 
—the instinct for surprise. It was excellent strat¬ 
egy. The men had their directions how to proceed, 
but in these directions no account was taken of lights 
turning on unexpectedly. They had been led to ex¬ 
pect a deserted office and no resistance. They stopped 
abruptly and gathered in a knot to inquire the mean¬ 
ing of this phenomenon. 

Carmel did some calculation for the first time. 
To reach the office the men would have to cross the 
area of light passing through its windows. She, her¬ 
self, was in the darkness beyond. This, she thought, 
was as it should be. . . . Presently the men surged 
forward again, keeping closely together. Carmel 
stepped out of the shadows into the light, where she 
and her weapon must be plainly visible, and paused. 

150 


CONTRABAND 


“Stop,” she called, sharply. 

They stopped, then somebody laughed. Thq laugh 
touched the fuse leading to the magazine of Carmel’s 
anger. She blazed with the explosion of it. The 
laugh was a slight thing, but it caused the difference 
between a mere young woman holding a gun in her 
hands, and a young woman holding a gun in her 
hands which she would shoot. She stepped back¬ 
ward into the shadows where she could not be 
seen. 

“Go away,” she said. 

“LiT girl with liT shotgun,” somebody said, in a 
tone of interest. 

“I’m going to count ten,” said Carmel. “If you 
haven’t gone then I’ll shoot.” 

“LiT girl kin count to ten,” said the same voice. 
“Hain’t eddication hell!” 

“One,” she began, “two, three, four-” 

There was a forward movement, raucous laughter, 
inebriated comments. She hastened her counting— 
“five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. . . .” They were 
still moving forward slowly, evidently viewing the 
situation as humorous. She lifted the heavy gun 
and pointed its muzzle at the mass of approaching 
legs. . . . Her acquaintance with twelve-gauge auto¬ 
matic shotguns, and with the dispositions thereof, 
was rudimentary. She did not know what to expect, 
nevertheless she tugged at the trigger. There was 
a tremendous report which frightened her as noth¬ 
ing had frightened her that night. She felt as if 
one of those men had thrown his sledge and struck 

151 



CONTRABAND 

her shoulder. Dazed, bewildered, she all but lost 
her balance. 

But, steadying herself, keeping her finger on the 
trigger, she maintained a readiness for what might 
come next. Howls of agony emanated from the 
men. Two of them were rolling on the sidewalk 
clutching shins and cursing. But for this there was 
silence. Humor had departed from the situation, 
for even the smallest bird shot, discharged from a 
shotgun at less than a hundred feet, are not to be 
disregarded by those who shun pain. 

“She’s shot my leg off. . . . My Gawd! . . .” 

This exclamation of agony trailed off into curses 
and incoherent ejaculations. 

“Now go away,” Carmel called. “Next time I’ll 
shoot higher.” 

The shot, the suddenness, the unexpectedness of 
it, had cleared tipsy brains. It had created angry, 
dangerous men. 

“ ’Tain’t nothin’ but bird shot. All rush her to 
wunst,” shouted a voice. But before they could re¬ 
solve into action Carmel fired again, and then again. 
. . . It was rather more than such a collection of 
humanity could endure. With shouts and cries of 
pain they broke and ran. Carmel advanced, ready 
for another discharge, when, suddenly, there was a 
diversion. The attackers were taken in the rear, by 
whom Carmel could not determine. She saw 
at least two men, arms swinging clubs right and 
left with rare indiscrimination. The retreat be¬ 
came a rout. These unexpected reserve forces 

152 


CONTRABAND 


definitely turned the tide of battle, and in a time 
so brief as to make its recording difficult, the 
street was again deserted save for Carmel—and the 
reserves. 

They ran to her, Tubal and Evan Bartholomew 
Pell. It was the professor who reached her first, 
and stood inarticulate, trembling, his face working. 
His eyes searched her face and in them was such an 
expression as she had never seen turned upon her by 
human eyes before. . . . Nevertheless she recog¬ 
nized it. 

'‘Carmel/’ he said—“Carmel—are you—all 

right?” 

“Perfectly,” she said, endeavoring to maintain an 
attitude of aloofness toward the whole episode. 

“If anything had happened to you—if one of 
those beasts had touched you—even with the tip of 
his finger. . . 

He stopped suddenly, stared at her. It was as if 
his scholarly mind had once more come into its own, 
had seen, classified, cross-referenced his actions and 
sensations. His face mirrored astonishment, then 
apprehension, embarrassment. It completed the 
series by becoming that of a man utterly nonplused. 

“My goodness!” he said, breathlessly, “I believe 
I’ve fallen in love with you.” 

She made no reply, such was her own astonish¬ 
ment at the manner of this announcement. He glared 
at her now, angry reproach in his eyes. 

“It’s absurd,” he said. “You had no business 
permitting me to do so.” 

11 


153 


CONTRABAND 


With that he turned on his heel and stalked into 
the office. Carmel gasped. . . . 

“Lady/’ said Tubal, “you better pass me that gun. 
You ’n’ a shotgun fits each other about as suitable 
as a plug hat. ... If you was to ask me I’d say 
right out in meetin’ that you ’n’ a gun is doggone 
incongruous.” 

“I shot it, anyhow,” she said. 

“Dummed if you didn’t,” he exclaimed, admiringly. 
“Dummed if you didn’t. Them fellers ’ll be pickin’ 
bird shot out of the bosoms of their pants fer a month 
to come.” Then he paused to give rhetorical effect 
to the moral he was about to draw. 

“If you hadn’t went off half cocked with that 
whisky piece of your’n,” he said, “this here ol’ gun 
wouldn’t have had to go off at all.” 

But she was not thinking of Tubal nor of pointed 
morals. She was considering the case of Evan Bar¬ 
tholomew Pell and what she would do with him. 


CHAPTER XIV 


T HE days which succeeded that night’s adven¬ 
ture were placid. Carmel awoke in the morning 
as one awakes after a singularly realistic dream. It 
was a dream to her, unreal, impossible. She could 
not imagine herself doing what she had done; in 
short, she knew she had never done it. That she 
should have let off a firearm at human beings was an 
act so impossible as to make it seem laughable. 

She went to the office with apprehension. What 
would happen? How would Gibeon receive the 
news? Her apprehensions were needless. Gibeon 
received the news apathetically. In the first place, 
the town did not know exactly what had happened 
and was inclined to place little credence in rumors. 
Most of it strolled past the office before noon, seek¬ 
ing with wary eye for evidences of the war, and 
finding none. A scanty few passed through the 
door to speak with Carmel about it. Apparently 
Gibeon was not interested. 

Somehow this hurt Carmel’s pride. Girl-like, she 
felt herself to be something of a heroine, and wanted 
folks to recognize her eminence. But even her own 
staff seemed not to take that view of the matter. 
Tubal was sullen; Simmy was silent and frightened; 
Evan Bartholomew Pell failed to revert to the matter 

155 


CONTRABAND 


at all. He had retired more deeply than ever within 
his shell of pedanticism, and his supercilious air was 
more irritating than ever before. Carmel was hurt. 

She did not know how shaken Evan Pell was, nor 
the effect upon him of his discovery that a woman 
could be of such importance in his life as he found 
Carmel to be. With women he had no dealings and 
no experience. They had been negligible in his life, 
existing only academically, so to speak. Women 
and fossil specimens and remnants of ancient civili¬ 
zations and flora and fauna had occupied somewhat 
similar positions in his experience, with women in 
the least interesting position. He did not know them 
as human beings at all. They had never troubled 
him in the least. Nothing had ever troubled him 
greatly. He had always considered them in the mass, 
as a genus, to be studied, perhaps, as all created things 
should be studied. But never until Carmel’s advent 
had he entertained the idea that one of them might 
become personally important to him. Evan would 
have been no more astonished to find himself in¬ 
volved with a diplodocus than he now was to dis¬ 
cover his throbbing personal interest in an individual 
woman. 

He was angry with Carmel. Somehow she had 
done something to him. He was affronted. He had 
been taken advantage of, and now he was consider¬ 
ing what action to take. Decidedly Carmel must 
be put in her place, once for all, and the disagreeable 
situation with all its dreadful possibilities must be 
terminated with finality. 

156 


CONTRABAND 


Evan turned in his chair and felt for his glasses, 
which were absent. 

“Miss Lee/’ he said, in his most pedagogical 
voice, “may I have your attention briefly ?” 

Carmel faced him with some trepidation. 

“Last night,” he said, “moved by an excitement 
to which I fancied myself immune, certain words 
were surprised from me.” 

“I don’t remember,” Carmel said, weakly. 

“Pardon me,” he said, “you do remember. Your 
manner toward me assures me of your complete 
recollection.” 

“Indeed!” 

“However, in order to avoid misapprehensions I 
shall refresh your memory. My words, and I re¬ 
member them exactly, were as follows: T believe I’ve 
fallen in love with you.’ ” 

“Oh, that .” said Carmel, as if the matter were of 
no moment. 

“That. . . . Exactly. Er—your physical peril 
aroused in me an excitement and apprehension most 
distasteful to me. I have been puzzled for some time 
with respect to yourself and the strange effect your 
presence has upon me. The matter became clear last 
night. I said I believed I was in love with you. That 
was inaccurate. I knew I was in love with you.” 

“But-” Carmel began. Evan held up his hand 

as to an interruption in a classroom. 

“If you please. ... I discovered a fact, and one 
must deal with facts. I slept little last night for 
considering this one. I have reached a definite and 

157 



CONTRABAND 


final conclusion, and wish the matter to be under¬ 
stood between us once for all, and so disposed of.” 

“Mr. Pell-” Again he imposed silence upon 

her. 

“I am unable to perceive how this distressing con¬ 
dition came into being. It was wholly without in¬ 
tention on my part—against my every instinct. I 
do not wish to be in love with you.” 

“Indeed!” said Carmel. 

“Quite the contrary. Therefore I wish to impress 
upon you that nothing can come of it.” 

“And do you suppose-” Once again Carmel 

essayed to speak; once more he interrupted. 

“Be so good as to allow me to finish. Please under¬ 
stand my words to be final. I will not marry you. 
In no circumstances will I make you my wife. I 
do not want a wife. . . . It is no fault of mine that 
I am in love with you, and therefore I shall not per¬ 
mit myself to suffer for what I cannot help. I shall 
take measures to affect a cure, for the thing, as I 
see it, is a species of mental ailment. . . . There¬ 
fore, let me repeat, in spite of the condition in which 
I find myself, you need not expect me to become 
your husband. . . . The matter is closed between 
us.” 

He turned from her abruptly and became much 
occupied with the papers upon his desk. 

As for Carmel, she was in a state of mind. The 
thing manifestly was an outrage, an indignity, a 
humiliation, and she was angry. On the other hand, 
it was absurd, impossibly absurd, inhumanly absurd, 

158 




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and the laughter which struggled to come was only 
repressed by a wave of pity. The pity engulfed 
both anger and laughter. Poor, dryly crackling 
man! What must his life be without human warmth 
and human emotions! She was able to see the thing 
impersonally—the dreadful abnormality of his exist¬ 
ence, so that when she spoke it was without rancor 
and gently. 

“Mr. Pell,” she said, “you need have no appre¬ 
hensions. I do not wish to marry you. I am very, 
very sorry if you have fallen in love with me. . . . 
And I cannot tell you how sorry I am for you.” 

“For me?” he said, bristling. 

“For you. You are the most pathetic man I have 
ever known.” 

“Pathetic!” 

She nodded. “I have no experience with life,” 
she said, gently, “but certain knowledge is born in 
most of us. We know that life—real life—consists 
only of suffering and happiness. All other things 
are only incidents. All the good in life is derived 
either from sorrow or joy. If you pass through life 
without experiencing either, you have not lived. And, 
Mr. Pell, the greatest source of grief and of hap¬ 
piness is love. I do not know how I know this, 
but you may take it as the truth. I have never loved, 
but if I felt I never should love, I think I should 
despair. I want to love some man, to give him my 
life, to make him my life. I want him to be my 
world.” 

“It is useless to argue,” said Evan Pell. 

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Carmel flamed. 

“Argue!” she said. “Mr. Pell, let me tell you 
this, and as you said to me a moment ago, it is final. 
If you and I were the sole survivors upon the earth, 
I could do nothing but pity you. I am not sure I 
could do that. You are abnormal, and the abnormal 
is repulsive. ... You rather fancy yourself. You 
are all ego. Please try to believe that you are of 
no importance to anybody. You are negligible. 
Whether you live or die can be of no importance to 
any living creature. . . . You are accustomed to look 
down upon those who surround you. Don’t you 
see how people look down upon you? You think 
yourself superior. That is absurd. You are noth¬ 
ing but a dry running little machine, which can go 
out of order and be thrown upon the junk pile at 
any time without causing the least annoyance to 
anybody. Why, Mr. Pell, if you should die to-night, 
who would care? What difference would it make? 
What do you contribute to this world to make you 
of value to it?” 

He had turned and was regarding her with grave 
interest. Manifestly her words did not humiliate 
nor anger him, but they interested him as an argu¬ 
ment, a statement of a point of view. 

“Go on, please,” he said. “Elucidate.’” 

“Only those who give something to the world are 
important to the world. What do you give ? What 
have you ever given? You have studied. You are 
so crammed with dry knowledge that you crackle 
like parchment. What good does it do anybody? 

160 


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What good does it do you? Did you ever help a 
living creature with your knowledge? I cannot 
imagine it. You study for the sake of increasing 
your own store, not with the hope of being able to 
use all your knowledge to do something for the 
world. You are a miser. You fill your mind with 
all sorts of things, and keep them there. It is utterly 
selfish, utterly useless. Think of the great men 
whose work you study, the great thinkers and 
scientists of all ages. Why did they work ? Was it 
to hoard knowledge or to give it to the world in 
order that the world might live more easily or more 
happily? They are important because they were 
useful. You— Why, Mr. Pell, you are the most 
conspicuously useless human being I have ever 
encountered.” 

He regarded her a moment before speaking. “Is 
your thesis complete?” he asked, gravely. 

“It is.” 

“I shall give it my best consideration,” he said, 
and turned again to his work. 

It was not easy for Carmel again to concentrate 
upon the books of the Free Press, which, with only 
a limited knowledge of the bewildering science of 
bookkeeping, she was examining. Bookkeeping is a 
science. It is the science of translating simple finan¬ 
cial facts into abstruse cipher in order that nobody 
may understand them except an individual highly 
trained in cabalistics. The reason for this is clear. 
It is a conspiracy among bookkeepers to make book¬ 
keepers necessary and thus to afford themselves with 

161 


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a means of livelihood. . . . Carmel was reading the 
cipher in order to determine if the Free Press were 
in worse or better case for her ownership of it. 

Love and bookkeeping are subjects which do not 
blend, for, as anybody knows, love is not an exact 
science. Also it is a characteristic that love meddles 
with everything and blends with nothing. It is in¬ 
tensely self-centered and jealous. Therefore, as may 
be supposed, Carmel had difficulty in arriving at 
conclusions. 

An ordinary declaration of love must be some¬ 
what upsetting, even to the most phlegmatic. A 
declaration such as Evan Pell had just uttered would 
have disturbed the serenity of a plaster-of-Paris 
Venus of Milo. Carmel wished to compare circula¬ 
tion figures; what she actually did was to compare 
Evan’s declaration with the declaration of love of 
which she, in common with every other girl, had 
visualized in her dreams. It would be idle to state 
that Carmel had never considered Evan as a possible 
husband. It is doubtful if any unmarried woman 
ever encounters an available man without consider¬ 
ing him as a possible husband—or if any married 
woman, no matter how virtuous, ever passes an hour 
in the society of a gentleman without asking her¬ 
self if this is the individual with whom she may have 
the great love affair of her life. Love, being the 
chief business of all women from six to sixty, this is 
natural and proper. 

Here was a variant of the common situation. 
Carmel was informed she was loved, but that she 

162 


CONTRABAND 


need expect nothing to come of it. No woman could 
like that. It was a challenge. It was an affront. 
A gage of battle had been cast, and it is to be 
doubted if there is a woman alive who would not feel 
the necessity of making Evan alter his views. Car¬ 
mel did not want him in the least. Quite the con¬ 
trary ; but, now he had spoken his mind so brusquely, 
she would never be able to live in ease until he came 
to want her very much and wore his knees thread¬ 
bare begging for her. This was wholly subconscious. 
Carmel did not know it, but, nevertheless, she had 
determined to make Evan Pell pay fully in the 
coin of the transaction for the damage done by his 
ineptitude. 

With part of her mind on the figures and the rest 
on Evan Pell, she arrived at certain information. 
Unquestionably the Free Press had been gaining in 
circulation. That much she had accomplished. Her 
policy of reckless disclosure could have no other re¬ 
sult, and therefore it must have been good jour¬ 
nalism. As for advertising patronage—there, too, 
she had made progress. Her personal solicitation 
brought in some few new advertisers and resulted 
in old patrons enlarging somewhat their space. Also 
she had taken some business from Litchfield, the 
largest adjoining town, and, on a visit to the near-by 
city, she had induced a department store to use half 
a page weekly. How much of this she could hold 
was a problem. It became more of a problem within 
the hour, when no less than three of her patrons called 
by telephone to cancel. The Busy Big Store canceled 

163 


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a full page which Carmel had labored hard to get; 
Lancelot Bangs, photographer, and Smith Brothers’ 
grocery ceased to be assets—and no one of them 
assigned a reason. It worried her to such an ex¬ 
tent that she dropped her work and went to see 
about it. 

Her first call was upon the proprietor of the 
Busy Big Store. This gentleman was embarrassed, 
and consequently inclined to bluster, but Carmel, 
being a persistent young person, cross-examined him 
ruthlessly. 

“I got to borrow from the bank,” he said, finally. 
“No merchant kin git along without accommodation. 
Bank says I’m wastin’ too much money advertisin’, 
and it can’t back me if I keep on.” 

“So you take orders from the bank?” she asked, 
hotly, out of her inexperience. 

“You kin bet your bottom dollar I do,” he said. 

Carmel bit her lip. “Abner Fownes is a stock¬ 
holder in the bank, isn’t he ?” 

“One of the biggest.” 

Carmel turned away and left the store. She had 
run down her fact. No more was necessary. She 
knew why merchants were canceling their contracts 
with her—it was because Abner Fownes issued 
orders to do so. For the first time he showed his 
hand in overt act. The question now was: How 
many merchants in Gibeon could Abner Fownes con¬ 
trol? How long could he continue to dictate to 
them? . . . What good was circulation increase if 
advertising patronage failed ? 

164 


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She returned to the office in lowest spirits and con¬ 
sidered her case. It was not pleasant consideration. 

She had arrived in town a few weeks before, a 
stranger, without friends. She was unacquainted 
with Gibeon and with its peculiarities, and at the 
very beginning had made an enemy of its leading 
citizen, a man ostensibly possessed of great power 
to blight her prospects. She had made no friends, 
had not sought to strengthen her position by alliances. 
Frankly, she knew almost as little about Gibeon 
to-day as she knew the hour of her arrival. Her 
acquaintance was altogether with the melodramatic 
side of the town’s life, with the disappearance of its 
sheriff; with illicit dealings in liquor; with its po¬ 
litical trickery. She did not know who were its 
solid, dependable, law-respecting citizens. It might 
have been well to go to the trouble of finding who 
of Gibeon’s residents were in sympathy with her 
campaign of disclosures, but she had not done so. 
She stood alone, without the approval of those who 
worked with her. 

She saw how she had plunged into things with 
her habitual impulsiveness, without giving considera¬ 
tion to facts or consequences. Without intending 
it to be so, she had so arranged matters that the battle 
stood as the Free Press against the world. How 
much better it would have been to move cautiously; 
to be sure of her ground; to know she could rely 
upon powerful support. She wondered if it were 
too late. . . . 

At this stage in her reflections, George Bogardus, 

165 


CONTRABAND 


undertaker, darkened her door. George was not a 
youth, but he simulated youth. He wore the sort 
of clothes one sees in magazine illustrations—with 
exaggerations. He wore spats. A handkerchief with 
a colored border allowed its corner to peer from his 
breast pocket, and useless eyeglasses hung from a 
broad black ribbon. If George were seen standing 
in the window of some clothing store catering to 
the trade of those who dress by ear rather than by 
eye, he would have been perfection. Once George 
saw a play in Boston, and since that day he had 
impersonated a young English nobleman who had 
been its hero. His speech was a quaint mingling 
of New England intonation and idiom with what he 
could remember of the inflections and vocal man¬ 
nerisms of Lord Algernon Pauncefote. • 

“Aw—I say,” he began, lifting his eyeglasses to 
his nose. “Aw—Miss Lee.” 

“Yes, Mr. Bogardus.” 

“I say—this is the day we kin start depositin' our 
votes, hain’t it? . . . What?” 

“In the Handsomest-Man contest?” 

“Er—precisely. Y’understand—aw—have no in¬ 
terest myself. Not the least.” This was Lord 
Pauncefote at his best. “Buy m’ friends. What? 
Cheerio! Eh?” 

“Of course, Mr. Bogardus.” 

“Er—say, who else has got any votes in ?” 

“Nobody, as yet.” 

“Satisfactory, very. Yes, yes. . . . Lance Bangs 
hain't entered yit?” 


166 


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“Not yet.” 

“I fawncy ’e will be,” said Mr. Bogardus. “Aw— 
permit me to—er—deposit with you—aw—eighteen 
of these so-called coupons. . . . Guess that ’ll give 
me as good a start as any, seems as though.” 

“Yes, indeed, Mr. Bogardus. Good luck to you.” 

“Er—notice anything?” He toyed with the rib¬ 
bon on his eyeglasses and cast an arch glance upon 
Carmel. 

“Oh yes, indeed! How distinguished it makes you 
look!” 

He purred. “That’s the way I calc’late to look. 
How was it that feller said it in French. Seems like I 
can’t twist my tongue around French. . . . Eh? . . . 
Oh, dis-tan-gay. Sounds kind of, don’t it. Say.” 

He turned toward the door, but paused. “Heard 
the news?” he asked. 

“What news?” 

“Aw—fawncy an editor askin’ that. Fawncy! 
. . . They’re goin’ to declare the office of sheriff 
vacant and git the Governor to appoint Jenney to 
the job.” 

“Are you sure ?” 

“It’s bein’ talked all over. Jenney says so him¬ 
self. Rippin, eh? What?” 

So they dared go as far as that—to appoint to the 
high office of sheriff of the county a man such as 
Deputy Jenney! The thought was not without its 
pleasant facets. If she had forced them to take such 
a step it must mean she was reckoned as dangerous. 
. . . She hugged that thought to her breast. 

167 


CHAPTER XV 


E van Bartholomew pell was thinking. 

He had been thinking for hours, and according 
to present rate of progress, it would be hours more be¬ 
fore he arrived at a conclusion. He had found an 
interesting subject—one discovered rather later in 
life than by most people, but, perhaps, all the more 
interesting for that reason. The subject was himself. 

It is a fact that never until to-night had he thought 
about himself as the ordinary run of human beings 
think. When he had given consideration to himself 
it had been a sort of aloof, impersonal consideration. 
He had often thought about Evan Pell’s mind—as 
one thinks of a warehouse—and much consideration 
had been given to filling it with intellectual mer¬ 
chandise. No consideration whatever had been given 
to moving away any of that merchandise out of 
the warehouse and distributing it. 

His requirements had been of the simplest—food, 
shelter, and an opportunity to lay in intellectual 
goods, wares, and merchandise. With pleasure he 
had been unacquainted, and hence felt no desire to 
possess it. Sorrow was unknown to him. On the 
whole, he was rather like a chess-playing automaton, 
except that his range was somewhat wider and more 
complicated. 


168 


CONTRABAND 


But now he had discovered himself as an indi¬ 
vidual. The discovery was wholly due to Carmel 
Lee. He had fallen in love with her, which was a 
monstrous thing, but potent to prepare the soil of 
his mind for undesired crops. Then she had spoken 
to him about himself with frankness and logic. He 
was not disturbed by the frankness, but his ante¬ 
cedents rendered him apt to perceive the logic. That 
had impressed him. What was the use of himself, 
anyhow ? Such was the question he considered. His 
object was acquisition, not dissemination. Had he 
been mistaken in choosing that object? This led 
further. What were human beings for? Why had 
people to be born, and to live? He recognized the 
necessity of utility. Was he inutile? 

It was ten minutes after midnight when he ad¬ 
mitted he was inutile, or nearly so. What followed ? 
There followed immediately a disagreeable sensa¬ 
tion, a sense of humiliation. He, a representative, 
undoubtedly, of the highest order of human beings, 
was not useful. Members of much lower orders were 
useful. The ditch digger was useful; the man who 
collected the garbage was useful. In that event 
diggers and garbage men must be of more value 
to the world than himself. 

This was intolerable. He could not allow such a 
state of affairs to persist, but the method of abolish¬ 
ing it was not manifest. Mentally he tabulated 
the attributes of such patently useful things as he 
could remember, looking for their lowest common 
denominator. It appeared to be something like what 
12 169 


CONTRABAND 


Carmel Lee declared it to be—namely, improving 
some aspect of life upon this planet. If one could 
touch any phase of life and render it more efficient, 
he was useful. He wondered what aspect of life he 
could improve. And then he came to the most im¬ 
portant and far-reaching discovery of his life. This 
discovery came at exactly ten minutes past one in the 
morning. ... In order to find how one might be 
useful to life, one must know life! That was the 
discovery, and it quite overturned his conception of 
how he would live and die. 

Inexorably his mind forced him to a corollary. 
In order to know life, one must know human beings. 
He elaborated on this. It meant mingling with hu¬ 
man beings, taking part in their lives, watching and 
comprehending the significance of the ramifications 
of their actions and emotions. It was something one 
could not derive from books, unless, as he had heard 
vaguely, works of fiction depicted these things with 
some degree of verity. But he never read fiction. 

All of this led to another alarming discovery. 
This came at two o'clock in the morning. It was 
this—that learning, simply as learning, was not worth 
a tinker's dam. Of course this is not his phraseology, 
but it expresses his thought. Learning stored in 
the mind's warehouse is like gold not taken from the 
mine. It is no good even to the possessor. You 
have to mine and smelt gold before it takes on a 
measurable value. It has to be put into circulation in 
some form. The same was true, necessarily, of 
knowledge. 


170 


CONTRABAND 


This meant the overturning of his whole life, for 
Evan Pell, besides being logical, possessed another 
quality of greater value—when he perceived that 
any act was the act to be done, he set about doing 
it to the best of his ability. This was not courage; 
it was not resolution; it was natural reaction. 

At three o’clock he retired. It was with a sense 
of humiliation he lay down on his bed. Instead of 
being, as he had fancied, a wonderful and superior 
being, he was negligible. His resolution, taken with 
characteristic finality, was that in the morning he 
would begin to be the thing he was not. This was 
very fine, but it possessed one defect: It was purely 
academic. It emanated wholly from the head, and 
not in any fraction whatever from the heart. Emo¬ 
tionally he did not give a hoot what became of 
humanity. 

He awoke to a strange world in the morning—felt 
like a fresh arrival in a strange planet. His duty was 
to find out what the planet was about and, so to 
speak, make preparations to take out naturalization 
papers. How to begin? . . . Well, he must eat, and 
therefore it was essential to continue at his present 
employment. He thought about his present employ¬ 
ment superciliously until he caught himself at it; then 
he considered his employment logically. Hitherto 
he had taken no interest in it, except as it offered a 
Challenge to his intelligence. Carmel had doubted his 
ability to do the work, and, in irritation, he had 
essayed to prove he could do that as well as any¬ 
thing else. The thrashing he had taken from the fists 

171 


CONTRABAND 


of Deputy Jenney had reached deep enough to touch 
his latent manhood—to blow upon the ember derived 
from some sturdy ancestor. . . . Now he considered 
briefly the business of news purveying, and was able 
to see how serviceable it was to mankind. The busi¬ 
ness of a newspaper, as he saw it, was to give to the 
community the agenda of the world, and, by editorial 
argument, to assist in the business of directing public 
opinion. . . . This was a worthy business. . . . 
More specifically he gave thought to the Free Press 
and what it was trying to do. Carmel, rushing in 
where angels feared to tread, was endeavoring to cure 
a definite, visible sore on the public body. For the 
first time he viewed the activities of Gibeon’s liquor 
smugglers as a matter of right and wrong, and not 
as a problem set in a textbook. If he could help to 
abolish this malignant sore he would be performing 
real service. . . . That aspect of matters interested 
him. He found that the mere mental exercise of 
thinking about humanity gave one an emotional 
interest in humanity. . . . He was progressing. 

One could not attain to results in a laboratory with¬ 
out intimate contact with specimens; one could not 
attain to results in the world without intimate con¬ 
tacts with human beings. Therefore Evan made up 
his mind to procure for himself a mantle of socia¬ 
bility. . . . He wore it to the office, and Tubal was 
the first human being to see it exhibited. Tubal was 
mystified. 

“Good morning, Tubal,” said Evan, with pains¬ 
taking courtesy. “How do you do this morning? 

172 


CONTRABAND 


Er—we must become better acquainted, Tubal. . . . 
I trust I make myself clear. Yes, yes. I wish, at 
your leisure, to converse with you—-er—regarding— 
ah—many things. Yes, indeed. ... I wish to ob¬ 
tain your viewpoint.” 

Tubal stared, and reared back on his heels 
mentally. 

“Don’t feel dizzy or nothin’, do ye?” he asked. 
“I am perfectly well. Why do you ask?” 

“Aw—nothin’. . . . Say! . . . Looky here. 
Viewpoint, is it? Aw. . . .” 

“What I wish to convey,” said Evan, and he un¬ 
masked a smile which was decidedly to his credit, 
“is—that I wish to be friends.” 

Tubal regarded him suspiciously, but Tubal’s eyes 
were keen and his perceptions keener. He saw em¬ 
barrassment in Evan’s smile, and sincerity, and some¬ 
thing else which might have been called pitiful. 

“I’m doggoned!” he exclaimed. 

Evan sighed. This business of making human 
contacts was more difficult than he imagined. “I— 
you know—I fancy I like you,” he said. 

Tubal waved his hands, a fluttering, distracted sort 
of waving. “ ’Tain’t licker,” he said to himself. 
“Must be suthin’ he et. . . .” 

“Er—we will resume the subject later,” said Evan, 
“when both of us have more leisure. . . . Ah, good 
morning, Simmy. I trust you slept well. . . . The 

weather is—ah—satisfactory. Do you not find it 

_ ^ *>>> 
sor 

Tubal leaned against the press and swallowed three 

173 


CONTRABAND 


several convulsive times. Then he turned upon 
Simmy fiercely. “Go wash your face,” he shouted. 

Evan backed away a step and then beat a retreat. 
He sat down at his table and leaned his head on his 
hands. Obviously the thing had not been properly 
done. The results were quite other than he desired, 
but why? He had unbent. He had been friendly, 
made friendly overtures. What was wrong? 

At this unsatisfactory juncture Carmel entered, 
looking very young and fresh and dainty. Evan 
forgot his disappointment for the moment in his 
delight at seeing her. He stared at her as a hungry 
child stares in a bakery window. The sensation was 
highly pleasurable. He detected this and took im¬ 
mediate measures to suppress it. 

“Miss Lee,” he said, with some hesitation, “I gave 
careful consideration to your yesterday’s arraign¬ 
ment of myself.” 

“I’m sorry. I had no intention to wound you, Mr. 
Pell. I—I hope you will forgive me.” 

“You did not wound me. Er—quite the contrary. 
. . . As I say, I reflected upon what you said. I 
slept little. Unquestionably you were right. ... I 
have lived in error. My estimate of myself was 
mistaken. I have, in short, been of negligible value 
to the world.” 

“Mr. Pell!” 

“If you please. ... I have reached a determina¬ 
tion to revolutionize my life. I shall no longer stand 
aloof. No. I shall participate in events. . . . In¬ 
deed, I have made a beginning—not altogether au- 

174 


CONTRABAND 


spicious. I essayed to make friends with Tubal this 
morning, but he seemed not to comprehend my mean¬ 
ing. However, I shall persist. ... As to yourself 
—we are not friends, you and I. You do not rate me 
highly. ... I wish to correct this.” He paused. 
“As I have been compelled to inform you, I have 
fallen in love with you. . . . This moment, as you 
entered, I glowed with pleasure. . . . Yesterday 
I informed you you need expect nothing to come 
of it. To-day I am in doubt. ... I desired to hold 
myself free from—er—such things as marriage. 
Doubtless that, also, was a mistake. ... I am 
open-minded.” 

“You—you—are open-minded!” Carmel gasped 
out the words. 

“Exactly. I have determined to allow the emotion 
to follow its natural course, without interference by 
myself. Even if it results in marriage with you, I 
shall not interfere.” 

“Of all things,” said Carmel. 

“Meantime, while the more important matter is 
working itself out, let us endeavor to be friends.” 
As he said this there came into his voice a wistful¬ 
ness, a humility which touched her. Her eyes filled. 
She held out her hand. 

“Friends! ... Of course we shall be friends! 
You must overlook my bad temper. I have so many 
faults.” 

His eyes glowed, his face became animated. 
“You,” he said, eagerly, “are very lovely. You are— 
er—wonderful. . . .” He stared at her as if she had 

175 


CONTRABAND 


been an apparition. Carmel caught her breath and 
turned away abruptly. 

So much for Evan Pell’s effort to break through 
his chrysalis shell. . . . The fates had not determined 
if he were to become a moth or a butterfly. . . . 

At that very hour Abner Fownes was opening his 
mail. His frame of mind was not of the pleasantest, 
though he had succeeded in tiding over the day be¬ 
fore a situation financially threatening. The con¬ 
dition of his affairs was wearing upon him. Con¬ 
stant calls for money, demands upon his shiftiness 
to prevent a debacle, never-failing watchfulness, bore 
heavily upon the man. It was not easy to maintain 
his attitude of high-spirited public citizen. It was 
not simple to keep beneath the surface the man who 
lurked under the skin of the fatuous cat’s-paw. It 
was difficult to maintain the pretense of being used 
by smaller men, when constantly he had to twist 
smaller men to his own ends. 

Now he opened with trepidation a letter from a 
lumber concern with which his dealings had been 
extensive. 

We have received yours of the 20th with respect to renew¬ 
ing your note for $18,750 which falls due two weeks from 
to-day. We regret that in present conditions this is impossible, 
and must ask you to take up this paper without fail. 

Fownes crumpled the letter in his hand and stared 
at the paneling of his office as if he hoped by the mere 
venom of his look to reduce it to ashes. His pudgy, 
beautifully tailored shoulders moved upward so that 

176 


CONTRABAND 


his short neck disappeared and his ears rested upon 
his collar. Then he expelled his breath. He arose 
and went to the safe, which he opened—to which he 
alone possessed the combination—and took from its 
resting place the red leather book in which he kept 
the true record of his and his company’s condition. 
This he carried to his desk, and for many minutes 
he studied it, hoping against hope for some ex¬ 
pedient to make itself apparent. . . . There was no 
expedient. 

He returned the book to its place and locked the 
safe; then he twisted the handle of the telephone in¬ 
sistently, and gave Central the number of the Court 
House. 

“Deputy Jenney,” he said, arrogantly. 

The deputy answered. 

“Come to my office immediately,” he said. “Never 
mind who sees. This is imperative. ... At once.” 
Following that, he waited. 

Deputy Jenney entered, breathless, and stood 
panting. 

“Jenney,” said Fownes, “I’ve determined to make 
another investment.” 

“Eh? Already. . . . Why, we hain’t hardly got 
the last off’n our hands. It’s takin’ a chance, says I, 
and crowdin’ the mourners.” 

“I’m running this business, Jenney. . . . This 
next is to be no retail deal, either. It’s wholesale.” 

“You—you want to go easy. By golly! Mr. 
Fownes, so much stuff cornin’ in is goin’ to git 
somebody mighty curious.” 

177 


CONTRABAND 


“If you’re sheriff, Jenney, what will the curiosity 
amount to?” 

“Federal officers!” 

Fownes shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll see to your 
appointment as sheriff. You attend to organizing 
everybody to receive the shipment. We’ll need all 
available space and all outlets. I’m going to fetch 
in enough this time to flood the county.” 

“You know what you’re doin’,” Jenney said, sul¬ 
lenly, “but what with that damn paper a-peckin’ at 
us all the time-” 

“Nobody reads it, Jenney. And you’ll be sheriff.” 

“I’ll do my dumdest—but I don’t like it.” 

“And I don’t care whether you like it or not. And 
that’s that. Better see Peewee first.” 

“When’s it cornin’?” 

“Inside of ten days. . . . And, Jenney, I don’t 
believe the paper’s going to bother much longer.” 

“Eh?” 

“I’m going to—er—give that girl a hint of our 
plans.” 

“What?” 

“I’m going to give her a tip, as they say. She’ll 
investigate, and that professor will investigate.” 

“Like Sheriff Churchill did?” 

“The result,” said Fownes, “will be similar.” 



CHAPTER XVI 


are not,” said Evan Pell to Carmel Lee, 
“familiar with laboratory practice—er—with 
chemical analysis, for instance.” 

“I know nothing about it?” 

“I judged not,” he said, unwittingly reverting to 
his patronizing manner. “However, it seems to me 
the individual who searches for truth—in the hap¬ 
penings of the day—would be better fortified for his 
labors if he applied the methods of the chemist.” 

“As, for instance?” 

“Let us suppose there has been a crime. The 
crime is a result. An inevitable result of the com¬ 
bination of certain elements. Given the crime, the 
chemist should be able to analyze it and to separate 
its elements.” 

“I believe that is the method of story-book de¬ 
tectives.” 

“No. . . . No. . . . This is science, logic. A 
simple example. You hold a substance in your hand. 
You moisten it with iodine. If the substance turns 
purple you know starch is present. Do you see?” 

“Pm sure I don’t see.” 

“What do you think of Abner Fownes?” he asked, 
with uncharacteristic swerving from the subject. 

“I think he is abominable.” 

179 


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"Possibly. . . . But impersonally, as an individual 
—what then?” 

"He is a pompous, self-deceiving, hypocritical 
poseur.” 

"Uh! ... As to intelligence?” 

"As your chemist would say—a trace.” 

"I fear,” he said, "you have neglected to moisten 
him with iodine.” 

"What do you mean?” 

"I mean,” he said, "that you have utterly failed to 
comprehend what you are facing—what it is you have 
to do in this headstrong crusade of yours against the 
liquor smugglers.” 

"What has that to do with Abner Fownes?” 

"That,” he said, "is the big question.” 

"But why should he? That is absurd. Perhaps 
the smugglers are using him as a cat’s-paw in some 
manner—but he’s rich. There’s no need. These 
men take the risks they must for profit.” 

"Miss Lee,” he said, "you—er—challenged me to 
investigate this affair. I promised to do so. ... I 
have set about it in an orderly manner.” 

"So I imagine,” she said, a trifle wearily. 

"I have started with the compound itself—with 
the fact that we know there exists a wholesale traffic 
in liquor, from which a huge profit is derived. This 
is compounded of many small elements. I think we 
may take it as fact that the hunchback, Peewee Bangs, 
is an element; that his hotel is another element; that 
Deputy Jenney is a rather important ingredient. For 
myself, I am satisfied numerous citizens of Gibeon 

180 


CONTRABAND 


are involved—in the distribution and marketing of 
the liquor. I am quite certain, for instance, that the 
business of taking photographs is not the sole means 
of livelihood followed by Lancelot Bangs. . . . He 
is, I believe, a cousin to the proprietor of the Lake¬ 
side Hotel. . . . These things are present in the com¬ 
pound, but they could not, joined together, cause the 
result we see. The principal ingredient is missing.” 

“And what is that?” 

“A daring, ruthless intelligence. Able leadership. 
The brain capable of conceiving of bootlegging as an 
industry, and not as a matter of petty retailing.” 

Carmel Lee was impressed. Evan Pell possessed 
the quality of holding interest, of seeming to speak 
from sure knowledge. 

“I think you are right so far. What we need is 
to find this intelligence.” 

“I rather fancy I have found him. In fact, I have 
had little doubt as to his identity for a considerable 
time.” 

“Abner Fownes?” She shrugged her shoulders. 
“I dislike him—he is insufferable—but the idea is 
absurd. Bumptious little men like him, secure in their 
wealth and position, do not jeopardize it.” 

“That,” said Evan, “is dependent upon their se¬ 
curity. What would you say if I were to tell you 
Abner Fownes has been on the brink of bankruptcy 
for months? What would you say if I told you 
this rum running commenced only after his finances 
became tangled ? What would you say if I told you 
the major part of the profits from this liquor busi- 

181 


CONTRABAND 


ness went to maintain Abner Fownes in the char¬ 
acter he has assumed, and keep his imperiled 
business out of the hands of his creditors?” 

“I would say,” she said, “that you are crazy.” 

“Nevertheless,” he said, “I am convinced of the 
fact.” 

“But he has no brains. Look at him. Observe 
him.” 

“Miss Lee, it takes a man of tremendous resolution 
and of very keen intelligence to invent for himself 
a character such as he has exhibited to Gibeon for 
years. ... If the world supposes you are a nin¬ 
compoop—a vain figurehead—a puppet set up by 
other men—you are little in danger of arousing sus¬ 
picion as to yourself. When a man is commonly 
admitted to be a fool, he is safe. Fownes has been 
at infinite pains to prove himself a fool.” 

Carmel was far from dull. Her mind flashed to 
the keystone of the arch Pell was constructing. 
“Show me he is on the verge of bankruptcy and 
maybe you can convince me of the rest.” 

He told her. He itemized the contracts Fownes 
had made for the purchase of lumber, and the prices 
at the time of sale. He showed how the market 
had declined, and the total sum of Fownes’s losses. 
“These,” he said, “are facts—not public, but easy to 
come by. ... I first found the trail of them when 
the cashier of the bank asked me to assist him in an 
audit of the books. That was some months ago 
when I occupied my official position.” 

“But if you are right, then Abner Fownes is a 

182 


CONTRABAND 


murderer, or an instigator of murder. . . . Nobody 
can look at him and credit that.” 

“Abner Fownes,” said Pell, “is capable of any 
crime to preserve Abner Fownes. I have watched 
him, studied him. I know.” 

“I can’t believe. ... It is incredible. No. You 
must be mistaken.” 

“Miss Lee,” said Pell, solemnly, “if you wish to 
continue to exist, if you hope to come through this 
affair with your bare life, you must believe. If you 
cannot believe, pretend it is a fact and act accordingly. 
Forget everything else and concentrate upon Abner 
Fownes. . . . But take this warning: The moment 
he suspects you suspect him—you will doubtless join 
Sheriff Churchill. ... I believe Churchill was on 
the road to the discovery. He would not have dis¬ 
appeared otherwise.” 

Carmel remained silent, considering. At length 
she spoke. “You are right,” she said. “One does 
not insure his house because he believes it will burn, 
but in case it shall burn. I shall make believe you 
are right about Abner Fownes—as an insurance 
policy. . . . But where does that lead us?” 

“To the sheriff’s office,” said Pell. 

“What ?” 

“If Jenney is appointed sheriff to succeed Church¬ 
ill, where is the machinery to fight Fownes? He 
could laugh at us. Therefore Jenney must not be 
appointed.” 

“But how can that be averted?” 

“I think,” he said, “the sole hope lies in yourself.” 

183 


CONTRABAND 


“In me!” 

“You must find a man, a man of courage, of public 
spirit. You must find a man who can be relied upon 
and whose name will carry weight with the Governor. 
. . . When you find him, you must go to the Capitol 
and make the Governor appoint him—and you must 
act at once.” 

“I ? . . . I go to the Governor ?” 

“You. . . . If you could carry a petition, signed 
by a number of citizens, it would strengthen you, but 
I don’t see how that can be done. . . . And yet— 
and yet-” 

“It must be done. . . . Secretly.” 

“To approach one man—who would talk, who 
was on the other side—would be to ruin the whole 
project.” 

“Nevertheless, it must be done.” 

He shrugged his shoulders. “First find a man 
worthy to hold the office,” he said. 

“I shall find him. ... I know Mrs. Churchill. 
She will know her husband’s friends and supporters 
—the men who worked for his election and whom he 
trusted.” 

“The idea is good,” said Evan. “Suppose you 
act without delay.” 

Carmel found Mrs. Churchill in the kitchen, giving 
a hearty welcome, in spite of her baking, to the 
visitor. 

“Set,” said Mrs. Churchill, “and lemme pour you 
a cup of tea. Always keep it simmerin’ on the back 
of the stove in case of headache.” This was a 

184 



CONTRABAND 


favorite fiction of Mrs. Churchill’s—that she suffered 
with her head and that tea was the only remedy. 
It would appear, however, that she used the beverage 
as a preventive instead of a cure. 

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t time to sit this morning. 
I’ve come to you because you’re the only person in 
Gibeon who can help me—and because you are the 
one most interested in helping me. ... I want to 
know whom to trust.” 

“Eh? . . . Trust? S peakin’ of young men, be ye ?” 

“No.” Carmel smiled as she saw the fire of 
matchmaking light Mrs. Churchill’s motherly eyes. 
“I want to know whom your husband trusted. I’ve 
got to find a man. . . . Deputy Jenney is going to 
be appointed sheriff,” she said. 

Mrs. Churchill’s eyes flashed. “In my man’s place! 
That critter!” 

“If,” said Carmel, “I can’t find an honest man— 
one like your husband—and get there first ” 

“Uh huh. . . .” said Mrs. Churchill, rumina- 
tively. “He wa’n’t much give’ to talkin’, but more ’n 
once he says to me, says he, ‘The’ hain’t many in 
this place I’d trust as fur’s I could throw ’em by 
the horns,’ he says. But I call to mind that when¬ 
ever he got kind of out of his depth like, and had 
to talk things over with somebody, he alius went to 
spend the evenin’ with Jared Whitefield. Him and 
Jared was close. I don’t calc’late you’d make no 
mistake goin’ to Jared and statin’ your case.” 

“Thank you,” said Carmel. “There’s not a mo¬ 
ment to be wasted. Good-by.” 

13 185 


CONTRABAND 


She did not return to the office, but walked out 
the main street, past the village cemetery, to the 
rambling, winged house from which Jared White- 
field ruled his thousand-acre stock farm—a farm he 
had carved himself out of the forest, cleared, 
stumped, and planted. She knew the man by sight, 
but had never held conversation with him. He was 
not an individual to her, but a name. She opened 
the gate with trepidation, not because she feared 
the reception of herself, but because she was appre¬ 
hensive. Mr. Whitefield, when studied at close range, 
would not measure up to the stature of the man she 
felt was needed. 

A dog barked. A voice silenced the dog. Carmel 
noted how suddenly the dog quieted when the voice 
spoke. Then a man appeared around the corner of 
the house, an ax in his hand, and stood regarding 
her. He did not bow, nor did he speak. He merely 
stood, immobile, as if some cataclysm of nature had 
caused him to burst through the soil at that spot, 
and as if there still remained embedded roots of 
him which anchored him forever to the spot. He 
was big, straight, bearded. At first glance she 
thought him grim, but instantly decided it was not 
grimness, but granite immobility. She approached 
and greeted him. 

“Good morning, Mr. Whitefield,” she said. 

He inclined his head and waited. 

“I am Miss Lee, proprietor of the Free Press/* 
she said. 

“I know ye,” he said. 


186 


CONTRABAND 


Surely he was difficult; but for all that, she felt 
herself drawn to the man. There was a feeling that 
if she could scale his granite sides and sit upon the 
shelf of his shoulder she would be safe—that noth¬ 
ing could topple him from the spot where he had 
taken root. 

“I want to talk to you, Mr. Whitefield. It is a 
matter of great importance—almost of life and 
death,” she said. 

“Say it,” said Jared Whitefield. 

“They’re going to appoint Deputy Jenney sheriff,” 
she said. 

“Know it.” 

“It mustn’t be.” 

“Why?” 

“Is it safe to speak here. A word overhead-” 

“This is my yard,” said Jared, and there was 
much, much more in the words than the mere state¬ 
ment of the fact. It was a declaration of independ¬ 
ence. It was a guaranty. It lifted Jared out of the 
commonplace and made a personage of him—the un¬ 
questioned ruler of a principality. Where he was, 
he ruled. 

“You know what my paper has done.” 

“Lighted matches nigh a powder keg.” 

“I believe, and I hope to prove, there is an organ¬ 
ization here for the purpose of wholesale dealing in 
smuggled liquor. I believe that organization mur¬ 
dered Sheriff Churchill. I believe Jenney is a part 
of it and that his appointment as sheriff is a move 
to give the criminals safety in their work. I know 

187 



CONTRABAND 


there are huge profits. At the top is some man of 
intelligence who directs. I want to get that man.” 

“Who?” 

“I think Sheriff Churchill knew—or guessed. 
That’s why he is dead.” 

“Uh! . . . Wa-al?” 

“Our only chance is to block Jenney’s appointment. 
To get first to the Governor with the name of an¬ 
other man—a man whose name and personality 
carry weight. If we can get the office of sheriff 
we are halfway to success.” 

“Will Abner Fownes back the man you pick? 
Go to the Governor fer ye ?” 

She looked at him briefly, moved a step closer, 
and lowered her voice. 

“Abner Fownes,” she said, “is the man I believe 
to be the chief of the rum runners. I believe he 
gave the word to kill Sheriff Churchill.” 

Whitefield moved for the first time. He ran a 
hand through his beard and drew a breath like a sigh. 

“Life insured?” he asked. 

“You will be my life insurance.” 

She took him by surprise; his features actually 
changed for an instant. “Me?” he said. 

“When you are sheriff,” she said. 

“I’m fifty. By mindin’ my business I got twenty- 
odd year to live.” 

“He was your friend,” she said. 

There was a long silence while she watched his 
face, and he, looking over the top of her head, stared 
at the field and woodland stretching to the horizon. 

188 


CONTRABAND 


“He was my friend,” said Jared Whitefield. 

“Then you will?” 

“Can’t be done. Fownes has the say.” 

“I think it can be done. Will you let me try?” 

He considered in his ponderous way. Then he 
turned without a word and walked away. He pro¬ 
ceeded half a dozen steps and then halted. “Yes,” 
he said, over his shoulder, and continued on his way. 


189 


CHAPTER XVII 


C ARMEL walked back rapidly, but her pace did 
not interfere with the activities of her mind. 
She had many things to reflect upon, and not the 
least of these was a sudden realization that Evan 
Bartholomew Pell had, of a sudden, as it were, taken 
command. It was he, rather than herself, who had 
risen to the emergency. He had seen the necessities 
of the situation. He had comprehended the situa¬ 
tion itself as she had never done. While she had 
been obeying impulse he had been acting intelligently. 
It was true he seemed to have little tangible evidence 
to work upon, but, somehow, she felt he would be 
able to find it. The amazing thing was that, with¬ 
out effort, without seeming to do so, he had moved 
her into secondary place. He had told her what to 
do, and she had done it without question. . . . Evan 
was a surprising person, a person of submerged 
potentialities. She wondered just what kind of man 
he would be if he ever came to himself and came 
into his own personality. In addition to which, Car¬ 
mel, like all other women, could not but give careful 
consideration to a man who had declared his love 
for her. 

Then there was Jared Whitefield to appraise. She 
liked him, but found herself somewhat in awe of 

190 


CONTRABAND 


his granite impassivity. She felt he had looked 
through and through her, while she had not been 
able to penetrate the surface of him. She had talked; 
he had listened. He had made his decision, and 
wholly without reference to herself, or to what 
she had said to him. But, on the other hand, he 
seemed to have washed his hands of the responsibility 
for his appointment as sheriff. If it could be man¬ 
aged—-well and good. He would serve. But that 
seemed to be all. He offered no assistance, no sug¬ 
gestion. He had said “Yes” and walked out of the 
boundaries of the matter. 

Jared Whitefield was a personality, of that she was 
certain. He was a man to impress men, a man to 
rule, a man never to be overlooked. . . . Why, she 
wondered, had he remained inactive in Gibeon. Ap¬ 
parently he had rested like a block of granite beside 
a busy thoroughfare, negligent of the bustle of pass¬ 
ing traffic. What, she wondered, did Gibeon think 
of Jared. How would he appeal to Gibeon as its 
candidate for sheriff ? 

She reached the office and found Evan Pell wait¬ 
ing for her. 

“Well?” he said. 

“I’ve found the man, and he has agreed to serve.” 

“What man?” 

“Jared Whitefield.” 

He nodded, almost as if he had known it from the 
beginning. It irritated her. 

“You’re not surprised at all,” she said sharply. 
“No.” 


191 


CONTRABAND 


“Why?” 

“Because it would have required colossal stu¬ 
pidity to choose any other man—and you are not 
stupid.” 

She looked at Evan with curiosity, and he sus¬ 
tained her gaze. He was changed. She saw that he 
had been changing through the days and weeks, 
gradually, but now he seemed to have made some 
great stride and reached a destination. He did not 
look the same. His face was no longer the face of an 
egoistic pedant. It was not alone the laying aside 
of his great, round spectacles. The thing lay rather 
in his expression and in his bearing. He seemed 
more human. He seemed larger. . . . She was 
embarrassed. 

“The petition,” she said. “I must have that.” 

“Signatures would be easy to get. There are a 
hundred men who would sign any petition with 
Jared Whitefield’s name on it. Men of standing. 
But to approach one man who would go to Abner 

Fownes with the story—well-” he shrugged his 

shoulders. “I don’t suppose one man in a hun¬ 
dred realizes what is going on under the surface in 
Gibeon.” 

“We must take the risk.” 

“I’ll prepare the petitions and have Tubal print 
them—at once.” 

She sat down at her desk and wrote a moment, 
then got up and walked with steady steps into the 
composing room. Evan Pell stood looking after her 
with a queer expression; it was a look of loneliness, 

192 



CONTRABAND 


of yearning:, of self-distrust, of humility. He was 
thinking about Evan Pell and of what a failure he 
had made in the handling of his life. He was con¬ 
sidering how little he knew, he who had fancied him¬ 
self of the wisest. He weighed the value of book 
knowledge against the value of heart knowledge, 
and found himself poverty-stricken. ... It seemed 
so hopeless now to turn himself into the sort of man 
he wanted to be; the sort of man he had come to com¬ 
prehend it was worth his while to be. 

“I never would have found it out,” he said to him¬ 
self, “if I had not loved her.” 

The door opened stealthily and a barefoot urchin 
entered whose clothing consisted of trousers many 
sizes too large and a shirt so dirty and torn as not 
to resemble a garment at all. He glared at Evan and 
snarled: 

“Where's she?” 

“Where's who?” said Pell. 

“The editin’ woman.” 

“What do you want of her?” 

“None of your business. . . . Hey, leggo of me, 
damn you! I'll bite ye! Leggo!” 

Pell had the child by the nape of the neck and held 
him so he could not escape. He noticed a paper 
crumpled in one grimy hand and forced the fingers 
open. It fell to the floor, and as he reached for it 
the boy wriggled free and darted out to the side¬ 
walk, where he grimaced horribly and twiddled his 
fingers at his nose. “Ya-aaa-ah!” he squealed, and 
fled down the street. 


193 


CONTRABAND 

Pell smoothed out the paper and read, in cramped, 
printed letters. 

They hain’t treated me square and I’m getting even. They’re 
fetching it in to-night. Truckloads. You can git evidence at 
the Lakeside. Eleven o’clock. 

That was all, no signature, nothing to indicate the 
identity of the writer. Evan folded the paper and 
thrust it into his vest pocket. He looked through 
the door of the composing room and frowned. The 
line of his mouth was straight and narrow. Eleven 
o’clock, at the Lakeside Hotel! . . . Queerly enough, 
the thought flashed into his mind. What drew 
Sheriff Churchill out of his house on the night of 
his disappearance? . . . Evan passed through the 
swinging gate and sat down at his table just as Car¬ 
mel re-entered the room. 

“Who was in?” she asked. 

“Nobody,” said Evan Pell. “Just a kid asking 
for blotters.” 

She would go to the Lakeside Hotel. It was not 
in her character to do otherwise. She would go, 
she would place herself in peril. Had the note come 
into her hands, he had no doubt she would have 
concealed it and have gone alone. . . . Well, she 
did not receive it. She would not go. That much 
was sure. 

Carmel spoke. “There goes Abner Fownes,” she 
said, and, turning, he saw the well-known equipage 
with the coachman on the front seat and Fownes, 
pompous, making a public spectacle for the benefit 
of an admiring public, bolt upright in the rear seat. 

194 


CONTRABAND 


“He’s going some place,” said Carmel. “See. He 
has a bag.” 

“Yes,” said Pell. He remembered that Fownes 
had been absent from Gibeon on the night Churchill 
had disappeared. “Yes, he’s going some place.” 

They watched the equipage until it disappeared, 
making the turn toward the railroad station. 

“Tubal will have the petitions in ten minutes,” she 
said. “How will we go about getting signatures?” 

“I don’t think that matters,” he said, absently. 

“What ?” 

“I—I beg your pardon. . . . Er—signatures. Of 
course. Signatures.” 

“What ails you, Mr. Pell. Of course, signatures. 
We weren’t speaking of potatoes.” 

His manner was strange, she thought. He seemed 
a trifle pale. Was he ill? . . . No, he said, he was 
not ill, he was afraid he had been a trifle absent- 
minded. Carmel eyed him sharply. The thing did 
not look like absent-mindedness to her. 

He arose and went to the telephone. “Give me 
the station, please,” he said, and then waited. “Is 
this the station? This is the Free Press. . . . 
Yes. . . . No news? Um! . . . Just saw Mr. 
Fownes going past with a bag. Thought he might 
be going away. We like to print something when 
people go away. . . . Bought his ticket? ... To 
the capital, eh? . . . Thank you.” He hung up 
the receiver, and there was a look of profound 
relief on his face. This was surprising to Carmel. 
Why he should be relieved by learning Fownes 

195 


CONTRABAND 

was on his way to the capital was beyond her 
comprehension. 

“Miss Lee,” he said, “there will be no time to get 
signers to a petition.” 

“Why?” 

“Because you must start at once for the capital.” 

“But the train is leaving. It will be gone before I 
can get to the depot.” 

“Abner Fownes is going to see the Governor,” 
he said. “There can be but one reason for it. He 
has decided he needs a sheriff. He’s gone. . . . 
It is a six-hour trip by rail, with the change at 
Litchfield.” 

“What of it?” 

“By automobile one can make it in five hours—or 
less.” 

“But-” 

“If you will go to your hotel, please, and dress and 
pack a bag, I will have a car waiting for you here.” 

She frowned. This was giving orders with a 
vengeance. 

“I’m still owner of this paper,” she said. 

“Please, Miss Lee,” he said, and there was hu¬ 
mility, pleading in his voice. “Don’t be unreasonable 
now. This must be done. Nobody can do it but you. 
Please, please make haste.” 

She did not want to obey. It was her desire to 
rebel, to put him once for all in his old subordinate 
place, but she found herself on her feet in obedience. 
He compelled her. He had power to force her 
obedience. She was amazed, angered. 

196 



CONTRABAND 


“I shan’t-” she began, in a final effort to 

mutiny. 

“Miss Lee,” he said, gravely, gently, and she was 
touched and perplexed by the gentleness of his voice, 
“you have spoken to me of service, of forgetting 
oneself to be of service to others. . . . Please forget 
yourself now. You are not doing this for me or for 
yourself. ... It is necessary. ... I beg of you to 
make haste.” 

There could be no refusal. She passed through 
the gate and found herself walking with rapid, al¬ 
most unladylike strides, to the hotel. Up the stairs 
she rushed and into her room. In five minutes she 
was redressed in a gray tailored suit. Then she set 
about packing her bag, and, singularly enough, the 
first thing she put into it was an evening gown, the 
gown which she had worn but once, and that to the 
final ball at the time of her graduation. Why she 
included this dress she could not have said, unless 
feminine vanity were at work—a hope that an op¬ 
portunity to wear it might present itself. 

In fifteen minutes she re-entered the Free Press 
office. A touring car stood at the door, with a young 
man, strange to her, behind the wheel. 

“I’m ready,” she said to Evan Pell. 

“Thank you,” he said, quietly. Then: “Don’t let 
anything prevent you from coming to the Governor. 
You will know what to say. See him before Abner 
Fownes gets his ear . . . and . . . and come back 
safely.” His voice dropped, became very low and 
yearning, as he spoke these final words. “Come back 

197 



CONTRABAND 

safely—and—try not to think of me as—harshly as 
you have done.” 

“I—have never thought of you harshly,” she said, 
affected by his manner. 

He smiled. “I am very glad I have loved you,” 
he said. “Will you please remember I said that, 
and that it came from my heart. ... It is the one 
fine thing which has come into my life. ... It 
might have changed me—made me more as you would 
—less the man you have critcized.” 

“Why, Mr. Pell! ... You speak as if I were 
never to see you again. I shan’t be gone more than 
a day.” 

He smiled, and there came a day not far distant 
when she remembered that smile, when it haunted 
her, accused her—and gave her a strange happiness. 

“One never knows,” he said, and held out his hand. 
She placed her hand in his, and then he performed 
an act so out of tune with Evan Pell, pedant and 
egoist, that Carmel gasped. He lifted her hand to 
his lips. The gesture was not artificial, not funny. 
There was a grave dignity, a sincerity in the act 
which made it seem quite the right thing to have 
done. “Good-by,” he said. “You are very lovely. 
. . . Please make haste. . . .” 

He helped her into the car, and she turned. “Mr. 

Pell-” she said, but he was gone, had returned 

to the office and was invisible. 

“Ready, miss?” the driver asked. 

“You know where you are to go?” 

“Yes, miss.” 


198 



CONTRABAND 


‘‘Whose car is this?” 

“Mr. Whitefield’s,” said the driver, as he threw in 
his gear and the machine moved up the street. 

Carmel’s mind was not on the car, nor on its des¬ 
tination, nor upon her errand. It was upon Bar¬ 
tholomew Pell. . . . Could she have seen him seated 
before his table, could she have read his thoughts, 
have comprehended the expression of happiness upon 
his face, she would kave thought even more urgently 
of him. . . . For he was saying to himself : “Thank 
God she’s out of it. She’s safe. I’ve done that 
much, anyhow.” 

He drew the mysterious note from his pocket and 
studied it attentively. “She would have gone,” he 
said, “so I shall go. . . . Doubtless it is a trap of 
some sort—but it may not be. . . . And she is safe 
—she is safe.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


C ARMEL wondered how one went about it to ob¬ 
tain a private interview with a Governor. She 
was still young enough and inexperienced enough in 
life’s valuations to regard a man in that position as 
necessarily above the ordinary run of men. His 
office invested him with a certain glamour, a ficti¬ 
tious greatness. Governors, Senators, Presidents! 
Youth invested them with a terrific dignity. It is 
somewhat difficult, even for the wise and prudent, 
to see the man apart from his vestments; to under¬ 
stand that there is, in reality, very slight difference 
between human beings, and to approach those in au¬ 
thority with the sure knowledge that, no matter how 
lofty their position, they have, at best, but two arms 
and two legs, a fondness for mince pies, and a failing 
for colds in the nose. Governors quarrel with their 
wives, and have ingrowing toe nails. The forty- 
eight of them, heads of the several states of the 
Union, remind one of the main street in a boom 
town—two stories on the sidewalk, but a ramshackle 
shed in the rear. . . . 

No sooner did the dome of the Capitol appear 
through a break in the wheels than Carmel began to 
dress herself mentally for the meeting. She had a 
horrible fear she would become tongue-tied and 

200 


CONTRABAND 


thrust her thumb in her mouth like an embarrassed 
little girl who has forgotten her piece. . . . She 
glanced at her watch. It was five o’clock. 

How late did Governors work at governing ? . . . 
She directed her chauffeur to drive to the Capitol, 
and there she alighted because she had no idea what 
else to do. She climbed the imposing steps and 
entered the building. It was a repellent sort of place; 
a mausoleum of assassinated ambitions, and it chilled 
her. The corridors were all but deserted. 

Leaning against a column adjacent to a brass cus¬ 
pidor was an old man in a uniform which might 
have been that of a prison guard, a janitor, or a re¬ 
tired street car conductor. Carmel approached him. 

“Where will I find the Governor ?” she asked. 

“Gawd knows,” said this official, and made a gener¬ 
ous and accurate contribution to the receptacle. 

“Who does know?” Carmel asked, impatiently. 

“I hain’t here to locate governors. I show folks 
through the buildin’, and mostly they give me a 
quarter a head.” 

“Well, show me to the Governor’s office and I’ll 
give you fifty cents a head,” Carmel said. 

He peered at her, took a last, regretful look at the 
cuspidor and sighed. “ ’Tain’t wuth it,” he said, 
sententiously. “ ’Tain’t wuth fifty cents to see no 
Governor I ever knowed, and I’ve come through the 
terms of six. . . . Foller me.” 

Grasping at straws, she questioned him. “What 
sort of man is the Governor.” 

“The kind that can git himself elected to office,” 
14 201 


CONTRABAND 


said her guide. “Alius worked at it. Had his snoot 
in the trough since his fust vote.” 

“Is it difficult to see him ?” 

“Depends on who you are.” 

“Supposing you’re just nobody.” 

“If ye hain’t got nothin’ to give, ye hain’t got 
nothin’ to git nothin’ with.” 

“You don’t seem to approve of him.” 

“Him! Don’t think nothin’ about him. He’s jest 
the Governor. Be another next year, and then an¬ 
other and another. He’s all right as Governors go.” 

“Can’t you tell me anything about him ?” she asked, 
desperately. 

“He’s dark complected and takes a spoonful of 
bakin’ sody after each meal,” said the guide. “There’s 
his office. . . . Said fifty cents, didn’t ye?” 

Thus fortified for her encounter, Carmel opened 
the door and found herself in a large reception room 
where were two or three unoccupied desks, and one 
at which a young man was seated. He looked up 
as she entered, scowled, but as he comprehended her 
trim loveliness he manipulated his face into a smirk 
and got to his feet. 

“I wish to see the Governor,” she said. 

“Have you an appointment ?” 

“No.” 

He advanced with an ingratiating air. “Well, I 
might be able to fix it for you. . . .” 

“Suppose you try at once,” she said, for his kind 
was well known to her, as to any pretty girl. His 
chin dropped. “Take in my card, please,” she said. 

202 


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The young man revised his estimate. She was pretty, 
but she was class. Class, in his dictionary, meant 
anyone who could not be approached by the likes of 
himself. She might even be important. Sometimes 
women were important. They had rich or influ¬ 
ential fathers or husbands. At any rate, here was one 
it would be unsafe to approach with blandishments. 
She was able to peg him neatly in the board as an 
understrapper. He took her card and disappeared 
through an adjoining door. 

Presently he reappeared. 

“His secretary will see you,” he said, and as she 
walked past him he scowled again, and hated her 
for showing him his lack of importance in the world. 

The Governor’s secretary arose courteously as she 
entered. She appraised him at once; recognized him 
for what he was, for the mark was strong upon him— 
a newspaper man, rewarded for services by his posi¬ 
tion. He was young, intelligent, sure of himself. 
She knew he would have no awe of personages. 

“Miss Lee?” he said, glancing at her card. 

“I wish to see the Governor.” 

“You have no appointment?” 

“None. I drove from Gibeon on a matter of grave 
importance—almost of life and death to our town. 
I must see him.” 

“A pardon case ?” he asked. 

“No.” 

“If you will state your business, I will see what 
can be done. The Governor is very busy, of course, 
and cannot see everyone.” 

203 


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“My business is private. I can tell it only to the 
Governor himself—and I must see him. ... I must 
see him.” 

His face was not unfriendly as he regarded her 
for an instant. “The Governor is not here. He has 
gone. However, if you will come back at—say— 
ten o'clock to-morrow, I will see that you get a 
minute with him.” 

“I must see him now—to-night. To-morrow will 
not do.” 

“I’m very sorry, but you can't possibly see him. 
He is giving a dinner in the Executive Mansion, and 
a ball this evening. You can see for yourself. . . . 
He could not be disturbed. There are important 
guests. Our Senator is here.” 

She could see. The Governor's day's work was 
ended. His social day—an important social day— 
was beginning, and in such circumstances it would be 
impossible to penetrate to him. . . . She twisted her 
hands together and bit her lip. ... By this time 
Abner Fownes’s train would be arriving in the city. 
He, doubtless, would have access to the Governor at 
any time. Possibly he was to be a guest at the func¬ 
tion. . . . If he were, if he found the Governor’s 
ear, her mission would come to nothing. 

“Is there no way—no way?” she asked. 

“None, I am afraid. . . . But at ten to-mor¬ 
row. . . .” 

“Thank you,” she said, heavily. Then, “Is it a 
large party?” 

“Not a public function. Not small, but very ex- 

204 


CONTRABAND 

elusive. Our senior Senator, you know, is very im¬ 
portant socially.” 

“I see,” said Carmel. “Thank you again.” She 
found herself again in the outer office, and then in the 
corridor, making her way toward the stairs. Near 
the door she saw again her guide, close to the copper 
receptacle which seemed to have won his affection. 

“See him?” he asked. 

“No.” 

“Didn’t calc’late ye would,” he said. “Seen him 
go home an hour ago.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“Been poorer by half a dollar if I had,” he said, 
succinctly. 

She was driven to the hotel, where she registered 
and was shown to her room by a bell boy. No sooner 
had he closed the door and departed with her gratuity 
in his hand than she threw herself down on the bed 
in very girlish despair. . . . She had failed. Singu¬ 
larly enough, it was not the failure itself which stung 
her; it was the fact that Evan Bartholomew Pell 
would know of her failure. . . . She had failed him. 
This was an incomprehensible state of affairs, and 
when she discovered it she was shocked. What 
difference did it make what Evan Pell thought, or 
how he regarded her failure. It was none of his 
business, anyhow. The paper was hers, and he noth¬ 
ing but a poorly paid employee. ... It was all very 
well to tell this to herself, but the fact remained. She 
could not go back to Gibeon and confess failure to 
Evan. 


205 


CONTRABAND 


She sat erect, hands clenched. Her teeth pressed 
her lips. “A man would see the Governor. He would 
manage it. I’ve a right to see him. His business 
is with affairs like mine, and not with dances. . . . 
I will see him. I’ll make him see me!” 

There was a way, because there is always a way to 
accomplish everything. . . . Her thoughts came in 
fragmentary form, chaotic. Abner Fownes was in 
the city, perhaps in this very hotel. She tried to 
reason about him. What if he were a guest at the 
dinner. . . . That was a possibility to consider, and 
she scrutinized it. No, she concluded, he was not 
to be a dinner guest. Being a dinner guest of the 
Governor’s was not a fact he could have kept secret. 
It would elevate him in Gibeon’s eyes. He would 
never keep to himself a fact like that. Gibeon would 
have been informed. It would have been informed 
days ago so that Abner could have basked in this 
new glory! . . . But would he be at the ball ? That 
was not to be determined. In politics he was im¬ 
portant, and, ball or no ball, if he demanded an 
interview, the Governor would grant it. And he 
would demand an interview. He had journeyed to 
the capital in haste. This meant he had immediate 
need for Jenney’s appointment as sheriff. . . . He 
would see the Governor to-night! 

Carmel opened her bag and thanked God for the 
impulse which had included her evening gown in her 
equipment. She laid it out on the bed and smoothed 
it. . . . Presently she was taking a bath, refreshing 
herself, and feeling very adventurous and almost 

206 


CONTRABAND 


happy. With characteristic neglect of impediments 
and consequences, she had taken a resolution—to be 
an uninvited guest at the Governor’s ball. 

She telephoned for something to eat—to be sent 
to her room, for she feared to go to the public dining 
room, lest she encounter Fownes. At all costs Ab¬ 
ner must be kept unaware of her presence. She was 
as relieved as if full success were hers, and she 
dressed with animation and pleasure. When she 
looked in the glass she could not help reflecting that, 
if she were not an invited guest at the ball she would 
not be a discredit to it. 

It was difficult to wait. She paced up and down 
the room, planning, discarding plans. She endeav¬ 
ored to foresee obstacles and to remove them. She 
imagined, and enjoyed the imagining, dramatizing 
the whole evening in advance. She endowed the 
Governor with the qualities history gave to Abraham 
Lincoln—more especially in those episodes where he 
is reported to have arisen from important affairs of 
state to listen to the story of some wife or daughter 
whose loved one was to be executed for sleeping on 
his post. Yet she did not even know what the 
Governor looked like. His photographs—yes. She 
had seen his face, but it was not familiar to her, 
nor whether he was tall or short, brawny or slender. 
. . . . The picture she painted made him big, broad 
of shoulder, with a fine, high forehead, noble eyes, 
and a fatherly manner. Perhaps he would address 
her as child, and, with courtesy, lead her to some 
private spot where she would pour her story into 

207 


CONTRABAND 


his sympathetic ear. He would be amazed, startled, 
confounded at the news of such a state of affairs in 
the commonwealth he governed. . . . And he would 
act. He would send her away from him with the 
precious appointment in her hand . . . and with 
lofty words of praise. . . . 

She watched the time. It seemed as if days passed 
instead of hours before she telephoned down for her 
car. But when she issued from her room to descend, 
her dreams melted into damp fog and she was terri¬ 
fied. She feared to encounter Fownes at every step. 
Her heart almost stopped beating as she imagined 
terrible incidents. Suppose she were stopped at the 
door! Suppose, once inside, credentials should be 
demanded of her! Suppose the Governor’s wife 
should approach with a horrible society air and eye 
her scornfully and demand by what right she was 
there! She might be the center of a scene, might 
be expelled from the place! Almost she repented. 
Almost she returned to her room. But some¬ 
thing compelled her to go on. . . . The only 
courage is that which compels one in spite of his 
terror. 

The car was waiting. “The Executive Mansion/’ 
she said, and sank back in her place, quivering. 

Presently, too soon, they drew up before the 
awning which stretched from the Governor’s door 
to the street. A servant opened the car door and 
she alighted. He bowed elaborately. Carmel took 
it for a good omen. There was no questioning her 
of her right to be present. ... A certain security 

208 


CONTRABAND 


came of the knowledge that she looked as if she be¬ 
longed in this world. 

She mounted the steps and was bowed into the 
hall. No question was asked. Servants took charge 
of her and directed her. She mounted the stairs, 
found herself in a room with a number of women, 
who glanced at her indifferently. A maid took her 
wrap. In this security she lingered as long as she 
could find excuse—putting off the moment when she 
must descend. . . . An elderly woman was leaving 
the room, and Carmel, quick to grasp opportunity, 
left in her wake, keeping close to her on the stairs. 
Side by side they entered the ballroom—as if they 
were together. Carmel regarded the elderly dame 
as her ticket of admission. 

The orchestra was playing a fox trot; the room 
was vivid with color. . . . She paused, searching for 
the man she had come to see, but could not discover 
him. . . . Summoning what assurance she could, she 
entered the room and skirted it, her eyes on the 
dancers. She paused, looking for a seat. 

At the end, beyond the orchestra, was an alcove, 
and she moved toward it, entered it. Here was an 
observation post. She turned to find a chair from 
which she could watch the ballroom, and as she did 
so a man entered from a door at the left. Her hands 
flew to her breast and she choked back a scream. 

She was face to face with Abner Fownes! 


CHAPTER XIX 


C ARMEL was astonished at herself; she dis¬ 
covered herself to be cool and self-possessed; 
determined rather than frightened. Here was an 
emergency; her one thought was to prove adequate 
to it. . . . It was a thing to have been expected. 
Abner Fownes’s face reassured her—it informed 
her intuition rather than her intelligence. It wore 
an expression such as would have been more suitable 
to one in Carmel’s position—an interloper in danger 
of being detected and ejected from the house. His 
eyes were something more than startled or surprised. 
They were unbelieving. She saw it was hard for 
him to comprehend her presence; that, for some 
reason, it was inconceivable she could be there. She 
knew, through some psychic channel, that it was not 
the fact of her being at the Governor’s function 
which nonplused him, but rather the fact of her not 
being somewhere else—in some spot where he had 
expected confidently she would be. 

His face mirrored the sensations of a man whose 
plans have gone wrong unbelievably. He was angry, 
almost frightened, at a loss. She took command of 
the situation before his moment of weakness passed. 
“Good evening, Mr. Fownes!” she said. 

“G-good evening!” he answered. “What—how 

210 


CONTRABAND 


-” Then he smirked and drew himself up to the 

full realization of his stature. He resumed char¬ 
acter. “I did not know,” he said, pompously, “that 
you were an acquaintance of the Governor’s.” 

“May it not be possible,” Carmel said, sweetly, 
“that there are a number of things you do not know ?” 

“Young woman, you are impertinent,” he said, 
drawing his shoulders upward and his neck inward 
very much like a corpulent turtle in a state of ex¬ 
asperation. He was laughable. Carmel smiled and 
he saw the derision in her eyes. It must have been 
maddening to a man accustomed for years to defer¬ 
ence and to adulation—maddening and not to be 
understood. “I have warned you,” he said. “My 
patience nears the breaking point.” 

“And then?” Carmel asked. 

For the first time she saw the man, the real Abner 
Fownes. Lines, cultivated by years of play-acting 
in a character part, disappeared from his face. His 
chins seemed to decrease in number; his cheeks to 
become less pudgy; his eyes less staring and fatuous. 
His jaw showed strong and ruthless; his eyes turned 
cold and deadly and intelligent. She saw in him a 
man capable of planning, of directing, of command¬ 
ing other men—a man who would pause before no 
obstacle, a man whose absurd body was but a con¬ 
venient disguise for a powerful, sinister personality. 
He was no longer ridiculous; he was dangerous, 
impressive. 

“Miss Lee,” he said, “for reasons of your own 
you have gone out of your way to antagonize me. 

211 



CONTRABAND 


. . . I was attracted to you. I would have been your 
friend. I credited you with brains and ability. I 
would even have made you Mrs. Fownes. . . . You 
would have been a credit to me as my wife—I be¬ 
lieved. But you are not intelligent. You are very 
foolish.” 

There was no threat, no rancor. There was even 
a certain courtesy and dignity in his manner, but it 
frightened her more than rage and bluster could have 
done. It was the manner of one who has made up his 
mind. His eyes held her eyes, and a feeling of help¬ 
lessness spread over her like some damp, cold 
wrapping. 

“If you do not return to Gibeon,” he said, “I will 
forget your antagonism.” 

“What are you saying?” 

“Your presence in Gibeon has become an annoy¬ 
ance. If you do not return—it will be wise.” 

“Not return! . 1 . To Gibeon, and to the Free 
Press! You are absurd.” 

“In a few days there will be no Free Press,” he 
said. 

“There will be a Free Press in Gibeon,” she an¬ 
swered, '‘long after the bankruptcy courts have set¬ 
tled the affairs of Abner Fownes.” 

As she spoke she knew she had been again the 
victim of impulse; she had betrayed knowledge which 
she should not have betrayed. Fownes was expres¬ 
sionless, but his eyes glowed like sun upon sullied 
ice. 

“I have no more to say to you,” he said, and there 

212 


CONTRABAND 


was a finality in his words which conveyed more 
than the sense of the words themselves. It was as 
if he had spoken a death sentence. 

He turned to the door and walked away from her 
with that pompous waddle which was not so absurd 
when one realized how invaluable it was to the man 
and how painstakingly he must have cultivated it. 
... A servant peered into the alcove and entered 
with a yellow envelope in his hand. 

“Mr. Fownes?” he said. 

“Yes.” 

“A telegram, sir. The Governor said he saw you 
come in here, sir.” 

“Thank you,” Fownes said and tore open the 
envelope. He read the message slowly, then stood 
staring at it thoughtfully while Carmel held her 
breath. She sensed a menace in the telegram, some¬ 
thing which threatened her and her enterprises. 

He turned and peered at her, and there was some¬ 
thing saturnine in his eyes, almost mocking. 

“I imagine this concerns you,” he said. “It is 
from Deputy Jenney. It may interest you.” He 
read, “ ‘Whitefield out for sheriff. Miss Lee left 
town in his automobile.’ ” He shrugged his shoul¬ 
ders. “I wondered how you got here,” he said after 
a moment. Then, “How did you get in here?” 

“That is the Governor’s affair, not yours,” she 
said. 

“True,” he answered. “Suppose we leave it with 
him.” 

He turned to the waiting servant. “Ask the Gover- 

213 


CONTRABAND 


nor to step here, please. Tell him it is important.” 
Then to Carmel. “It will not be embarrassing for 
you to see the Governor?” 

“I came to see him.” 

“Uninvited.” 

She made no answer. She was frightened, quiver¬ 
ing. What could she say? What could she do? 
When the Governor appeared and she was denounced 
to him as an intruder, as a woman who forced her 
way into a private entertainment, how could she 
reach his ear with her petition ? . . . Would not the 
fact of her being an intruder make her case hope¬ 
less? She set her teeth. At any rate she would 
make a fight for it, and at worst there could be noth¬ 
ing but ignominious expulsion at the hands of some 
servant. The thought of that was unbearable. She 
was a woman, with a woman’s social consciousness 
and a woman’s delicacy. It seemed more terrible to 
her to be detected in such a breach of society’s laws 
than it would have been to be detected in a crime. 
. . . For a moment she was unnerved. 

She thought of her mission; of the public im¬ 
portance of what she was doing and the excellence 
of the motives which had brought her to do the thing 
she had done. This availed little. The humiliation, 
the public humiliation, would be as terrible. She 
meditated flight. . . . But then there arose in her a 
stubbornness, a resolution. Back of it was this 
thought —“He is depending on me. He sent me to 
do this. He looks to me to succeed.” The he was 
emphasized. It did not occur to her to wonder how 

214 


CONTRABAND 


Evan Bartholomew Pell came to be of such impor¬ 
tance to her in this moment, or why the fact that he 
was relying upon her should sustain her in this crisis. 
Nevertheless, it was so. She felt she would possess 
his approval, no matter what came, if she persisted, 
if she did not give up so long as there was the shadow 
of a chance of success. She felt, she knew, he would 
consider as negligible any sneer of society, any per¬ 
sonal humiliation sustained. She knew he would 
persist, and from this she drew strength. . . . 

She saw a tall, handsome man approach the alcove. 
From dimly remembered lithographs she knew him 
to be the Governor, and as he approached in his 
dignified way, she studied him. He looked like a 
Governor. He was smooth-shaven, appearing 
younger than his years. He carried a look of au¬ 
thority, the presence of a personage. It was a fine 
presence, indeed, and one of incalculable value to 
him. It had been his chief asset in reaching the 
height to which he had climbed. . . . Her scrutiny 
told her nothing more than this. The man who ap¬ 
proached might be a great man, a statesman, a man 
of tremendous depth and character—or he might be 
nothing but an appearance. She hoped he was a man. 

He entered and extended his hand to Fownes. 
“Glad you ran up,” he said, cordially. “I saw you 
come in, but couldn’t break away. How is Gibeon?” 

“Gibeon,” said Abner, “is flourishing.” 

The Governor turned his eyes from Fownes to 
Carmel, and they lighted an instant in tribute to her 
loveliness. 


215 


CONTRABAND 


“Your daughter?” he asked. 

“You don’t know the young woman?” Fownes 
said. 

“It is my misfortune,” said the Governor. 

“Um! . . . Possibly. Then, as I supposed, she is 
not here at your invitation?” 

The Governor looked from one to the other of 
them, and seemed distressed, embarrassed. He 
sensed a tenseness, a situation, and, of all things, he 
hated to face situations. 

“I don’t understand,” he said. 

Carmel stepped closer. “Governor,” she said, “I 
am not a guest. I came to see you to-day on an im¬ 
portant matter—a matter of life and death. I went 
to your office, but you had gone. It was necessary 
to see you to-night. ... So I came. I am an in¬ 
truder—but I will go as quickly as I can. . . . After 
I have spoken with you.” 

Fownes shrugged his shoulders and laughed. 

“The young woman deserves to get ahead,” he 
said, “if effrontery can win success. . . . But, un¬ 
fortunately, I know her, Governor. She owns a 
bankrupt, blackmailing rag in Gibeon. . . . That is 
unimportant, but, otherwise, I am sure your wife 
would not care to have her rubbing elbows with her 

guests. ... In Gibeon-” he paused to allow the 

innuendo to take effect. “To prevent unpleasantness, 
or any chance of her recognition here, the best thing 
will be to call a servant and show her quietly to the 
street.” 

Carmel knew such hot rage as she had never known 

216 



CONTRABAND 


before. She could have struck Fownes. Hot words 
sprang to her lips, but she suppressed them, fought 
for self-control. She laid a tiny hand on the Gover¬ 
nor’s arm. 

“Sir,” she said, “you occupy a great position this 
state. Thousands of people look up to you for the 
qualities you must possess. . . . Fairness must be 
among them. I insist that you listen to me now. 
. . . Abner Fownes, you have lied, deliberately and 
maliciously. You know there is no reason why I 
should not be here, no reason why any man or 
woman should object to my presence. It was a 
cowardly lie—told because you were afraid.” 

“Shall I call a servant—to prevent a scene? Your 
guests may overhear. ... It wouldn’t read well in 
the papers.” 

The Governor hesitated, for he was a vacillating 
man, timorous, a mirror reflecting stronger images 
than his own. 

“I- Possibly you had better go quietly,” he 

said. 

“I shall not go,” Carmel said. “You shall hear 
me. I will not leave except by force—and then you 
will have your scene. ... It is too late for me to 
care what happens now. If you dare to eject me I 
promise you a scene. . . .” 

“But—er—young woman-” 

“My name is Miss Lee, and you will address me 
so,” she said. “If you will listen to me five minutes, 
I will go.” 

“Nonsense!” said Fownes. 

15 217 





CONTRABAND 


“Why did she come ? What is it all about ? This 
is most unpleasant,” said the Governor. 

“Why did I come? What is it about. ... It is 
about murder!” 

“Murder! . . . What—murder?” 

“The murder of Sheriff Churchill of Gibeon.” 

“But he was not murdered. He ran away, ab¬ 
sconded.” 

Fownes laughed. “You have all the facts in that 
matter, Governor.” 

“I think so. . . .” 

“You have no facts.” Carmel clutched his sleeve. 
“This man, if he has given you the facts you have, 
has lied to you. . . . Sheriff Churchill is dead. He 
did not abscond. He was killed doing his duty by 
men who feared detection.” 

“What are you saying? What is this, Fownes? 
What does she mean?” 

“Politics,” said Fownes, in a voice he tried to 
keep steady. 

“It is not politics. Sheriff Churchill was lured 
from his home and killed. I know. By the crowd 
of men in Gibeon who are making themselves rich by 
smuggling whisky over the border. . . . There is a 
wholesale traffic, Governor. I have seen it. I, my¬ 
self, discovered a cache of hundreds of bottles in the 
woods. . . . It is no petty bootlegging, but a great, 
wholesale traffic. . . .” 

“Nonsense!” said Fownes. 

“The headquarters of it is the Lakeside Hotel. 
That is the point of distribution. . . . Deputy Sher- 

218 


CONTRABAND 


iff Jenney, whom this man has come to ask you to 
appoint sheriff in Mr. Churchill’s place, is a crony 
of the proprietor. He is in it, as I shall prove. But 
he is not the head of it. . . . These men, because I 
printed in my paper what I discovered, came to wreck 
my plant. I believe they are ready to do with me 
as they did with Sheriff Churchill. ... So I have 
come, I have forced my way to you, to beg you not 
to make that appointment. It gives these law¬ 
breakers, these murderers, control of the legal ma¬ 
chinery of the county. Governor, do you know Jared 
Whitefield?” 

“I—do,” said the Governor. 

“He is a good man, a capable man, an honest man, 
and he has agreed to accept the appointment as 
sheriff and to clean out this association of law¬ 
breakers. That is my purpose in coming here—to 
ask his appointment of you.” 

“Whitefield!—Whitefield! . . . What’s this? 

What’s this about Whitefield, Fownes ?” The Gover¬ 
nor was bewildered. Whitefield’s name completed 
his consternation. He despised conflict of any sort 
and political conflict most of all. When influential 
men fell out it agitated him, especially if he were 
asked to take sides. He had gone forward in the 
world by keeping in mid-channel, making no contacts 
with either shore. He had done extraordinarily well 
by never making up his mind and by availing him¬ 
self of the opportunities other people dropped. . . . 
If there was trouble between Whitefield and Fownes 
it would mean taking sides. . . . Whitefield! He 

219 


CONTRABAND 


knew what Whitefield was capable of, and Fownes— 
Fownes was supposed to control his county. He 
quite lost sight of the specific matter in hand in his 
agitation over distant political aspects. 

“Whitefield’s out of politics. This woman’s just 
raked up his name. He’s dead. . . . She lies.” 

“But—he’s got a following. Not only in his 
county. There was talk of his running for Governor 
once.” 

“There would be again if you gave him this ap¬ 
pointment,” said Fownes, adroitly. “Now Jenney 
deserves the place. He knows the machinery of the 
office-—and I want him to have the job.” 

“Jenney’s a brute and a criminal. If you appoint 
him you’ll outrage the decent people of the whole 
county—and I’ll take care they know how and why 
you appointed him,” said Carmel. Her courage was 
in its place again. She was not afraid, but she was 
desperate. “I’ll tell the people how the Governor of 
this state rewards a man for being a party to the 
murder of a public official. It won’t sound well.” 

“But Churchill wasn’t murdered. He—he ab¬ 
sconded,” said the Governor. 

“He was murdered. That man knows it.” Car¬ 
mel cast off all discretion. “I believe he ordered the 
murder. I know he is the head and brains of this 
liquor-smuggling conspiracy. ... I suspect, he’s 
plotting to put me out of the way. . . . He’s bank¬ 
rupt. Do you know that, Governor. He’s fighting 
off his creditors, keeping his head above the surface 
with money he gets from smuggling and selling 

220 


CONTRABAND 


whisky. . . . That’s Abner Fownes. That’s the 
man who asked you to appoint his Man Friday sher¬ 
iff. ... You dare not do it, Governor. . . . You’ll 
be a party to murder if you do. . . . Oh, Governor, 
please, please see this thing as it is. It’s an oppor¬ 
tunity. ... We can break this thing up; we can 
destroy this traffic going on under the surface of 
Gibeon, turning decent people into lawbreakers. . . . 
I tell you”—her voice lifted as she spoke—“I tell you 
Abner Fownes is as guilty of Sheriff Churchill’s 
murder as if he did it with his own hand.” 

Fownes shrugged his shoulders and forced a laugh. 

“I told you it was a blackmailing sheet,” he said. 

“I know. . . . But Whitefield. That’s what wor¬ 
ries me. I don’t want a war on my hands.” 

“Governor, have you listened to me ?” Carmel said, 
fiercely. “Have you heard what I have told you— 
and, hearing it, are you worrying about petty po¬ 
litical squabbles. . . . We are talking about murder ” 

“I—I must go back to my guests. I’ll take this 
matter under advisement. . . . I’ll have it investi¬ 
gated. Fownes, why did you get me in this mess?” 

“Governor,” said Fownes, “I’m going away from 
here with Jenney’s appointment as sheriff in my 
pocket. . . . Think back. It was my county put 
you where you are. I swung it for you. I can just 
as well swing it against you—and election isn’t far 
off. . . . My county can keep you out of the Senate. 

. . . If you listen to a fool girl who is trying to 
blackmail me into marrying her—why, that’s your 
lookout, but you’re a dead chicken in this state. . . . 

221 


CONTRABAND 


Either I get Jenney or I throw every dollar I own 
and every ounce of my influence against you. You're 
none too strong. ... You shilly-shally. You’ve 
listened to a pack of lies, and you know they are 
lies. Who is Whitefield, to disturb you?” 

“But if there was a murder?” 

“Fiddlesticks! . . . Do I get Jenney or not? Fish, 
Governor, or cut bait.” 

The Governor looked appealingly at Carmel, 
turned his eyes to Abner Fownes. He was an ex¬ 
ceedingly unhappy man. 

“You—you have no evidence,” he said. “You 
make grave charges, and on nothing but your un¬ 
supported word. . . . I—in fairness—I do not see 
how I can consider them. Charges against a man 
of Fownes’s standing.” 

Carmel knew she was defeated. Her mission had 
been in vain. Such a man as the Governor was to 
be reached only by underground channels, by the 
political alleys and blind byways so well known to 
him. . . . He was spineless, a figurehead, nothing. 
. . . Fownes would get his man, Jenney would be¬ 
come sheriff, and Gibeon would be abandoned into 
the arms of the liquor smugglers. ... To her per¬ 
sonally it meant more than this. It meant imminent 
danger. . . . With the machinery for detecting and 
apprehending criminals in his hands, Fownes would 
find little difficulty in disposing of herself. . . . She 
made one more desperate effort, pleading, cajoling, 
arguing—but in vain. 

“Shall I call the servant?” Fownes said, with his 

222 


/ 


CONTRABAND 

cold eyes upon Carmel. “I think we have had 
enough of this.” 

“No scene. We must have no scene. Will you 
go quietly, Miss Lee.” 

“I will go,” she said, “and Heaven help a state 
with such a man at its head. . . .” 

She went out of the alcove, ascended the stairs, 
and found her wrap. Her automobile drew up as 
its number was called, and she entered. 

“The telegraph office, quickly,” she said. 

At the office she sent two messages—one to Evan 
Pell, the other to Jared Whitefield himself. They 
announced her failure. 

“Can you—will you drive me back to Gibeon 
to-night?” she asked the chauffeur. 

“Mr. Whitefield said I was to do whatever you 
wanted.” 

“The hotel, then, until I get my bag.” 

In twenty minutes she was in the car again, speed¬ 
ing over the dark roads toward home, heavy of heart, 
depressed, weighed down with foreboding. ... It 
was nearly eleven o’clock. She felt as if she could 
not reach Gibeon soon enough, and repeatedly begged 
her driver for more speed. . . . 


223 


CHAPTER XX 


T HE east was glowing dully with approaching 
dawn when Carmel alighted from the car at 
the hotel in Gibeon and hurried through the deserted 
office and up the scantily illuminated stairs to her 
room. She was weary, not in body alone, but with 
that sharper, more gnawing weariness of the spirit. 
She had failed, and the heaviness of failure sat upon 
her. . . . She could not think. It was only with an 
effort she was able to force herself to undress and 
to crawl into her bed. . . . Then, because she was 
young and healthy, because she had not yet reached 
an age and experience at which troubles of the mind 
can stay the recuperative urge of the body, she slept. 

It was nine o’clock when she awakened, and with a 
feeling of guilt she dressed hurriedly, snatched a cup 
of coffee, and hastened to the office. She dreaded to 
meet Evan Pell, to confess her inadequacy. . . . 
There was another reason, deeper than this, instinc¬ 
tive, why she hesitated to meet him. It was a sort of 
embarrassment, an excited desire to see him fighting 
with reluctance. She did not analyze it. . . . But 
she was spared the ordeal. Evan Pell was not in 
his place. 

There was petty business to attend to, and an hour 
passed. Such hours may pass even when one is in the 

224 


CONTRABAND 


midst of such affairs as surround Carmel. . . . Her 
last night’s adventure seemed unreal, dreamlike. 
Gibeon, going about its concerns outside her window, 
seemed very real. . . . She looked out at Gibeon 
and her mind refused to admit the fact that it could 
continue normally to plod and buy and sell and gossip 
as she saw it doing, if there were anything beneath 
its surface. Crime, plotting, trickery, sinister threat 
—these could not exist while Gibeon looked and 
labored as it looked and labored this morning. The 
town should have lagged and whispered; apprehen¬ 
sion should have slowed its steps and stilled its voice; 
a shadow of impending catastrophe should have 
darkened the streets. . . . But the streets were bright 
with sunlight. 

She saw women marketing with baskets on their 
arms; she saw farmers passing in automobiles and 
wagons; she heard children shouting and laughing. 
. . . It was Gibeon—a normal, unexcited, placid 
Gibeon. And yet, murder, or worse than murder, 
poised over the village on its black wings, poisoning 
the air its people breathed! . . . The whole thing 
was absurd. 

'‘Where is Mr. Pell?” she asked Simmy, who came 
in to lay a galley proof on her desk. 

“Hain’t been in this mornin’,” Simmy told her. 
“Say, George Bogardus’s been in twict to see you.” 

Carmel smiled. She knew why George had called. 
It was the Handsomest-Man contest. . . . She con¬ 
sidered that farce, for it was a farce—a makeshift to 
gain circulation, a trick played by herself with her 

225 


CONTRABAND 


tongue in her cheek. ... It had quickened the in¬ 
terest of Gibeon, however. Gibeon could be made 
excited over an absurd voting to decide upon its 
handsomest man! It could discuss the thing, gossip 
about it, lay small wagers. More than one wife, feel¬ 
ing bound by self-esteem, had entered her husband 
and deposited votes in his name. This, Carmel 
judged, was an effort on the part of these women to 
vindicate their own judgment; to elevate themselves 
in their own esteem; to cry up their own possessions. 
Some there were, of course, who laughed, who saw 
the absurdity of it, but more remained to take it 
with utmost sincerity, and of these George Bogardus, 
undertaker de luxe, was perhaps the most sincere. 
George neglected his business to pursue votes. But 
then, so did Lancelot Bangs! . . . Single men both, 
the mainstay of local haberdashers! The contest had 
now arrived at a point where even admiring wives 
were discouraged and hoped only to have a husband 
who ran third—for Bogardus and Bangs seemed 
sure to outdistance the field. 

Not only did these young men vie with each other 
in the pursuit of votes, but in the purchase of apparel. 
If Bogardus imported a yellow silk necktie made more 
beautiful by inch-broad polka dots of green, Bangs 
answered the challenge with patent-leather shoes 
with gray cloth tops cross-hatched with mauve. . . . 
Each spent his substance in riotous garments, and 
neither neglected, at the busy hour in the post office, 
to take up his station before the door, full in the 
public eye, to enable the populace to scrutinize and 

226 


CONTRABAND 


to admire. It was a campaign such as no political 
election ever had brought to Gibeon. 

Yesterday, Carmel learned from Tubal, it had come 
to personal conflict. As the pair of candidates oc¬ 
cupied their stations, each on his side of the post- 
office door, Bogardus had spoken in a manner highly 
derogatory of a new hat displayed by his rival for 
the first time. It was a hat of Leghorn straw, wide 
and floppy of brim. The under side of this brim 
was lined with green cloth, either for decorative pur¬ 
poses or to soften the light reflected to the eyes. 
About the crown was folded a scarf, and the colors 
in this scarf were such as to detain the eye even as 
the sound of an ambulance gong takes possession of 
the ear. It was a master stroke. It quite upset 
Bogardus to the extent that he forgot the amen¬ 
ities and, sotto voce, asked the world to tell him 
where Lancelot Bangs got hold of the merry-go- 
round he was wearing on his head. “All it needs, 
by Jove!” said George in his best British manner, 
“to make a feller know it’s a merry-go-round is to 
have Lance’s brain start playin’ a hurdy-gurdy tune. 
Eh? What?” 

Battle ensued, and spectators estimated that no 
less than forty dollars’ worth of haberdashery was 
destroyed by the fury of it. The gladiators were 
torn apart—but not until Gibeon had enjoyed the 
spectacle to the full. But the spark was lighted. 
Rivalry had grown to jealousy; now jealousy had 
become hatred. In the hearts of each of these Beau 
Brummels burned a fire of malice. . . . Each was 

227 


CONTRABAND 

now determined, in some manner or another, to elim¬ 
inate his rival. 

Presently George Bogardus peered through the 
office door and, seeing Carmel, entered, bringing with 
him a sartorial effulgence overpowering. He rested 
his malacca cane against the rail, pulled down his 
lavender waistcoat, straightened his tie, lifted his 
hat, and bowed from the waist. 

“Miss Lee,” he said, “aw—I say, now—d’you 
mind if I have a bit of a word with you. Eh? 
What?” 

“Certainly, Mr. Bogardus. What can I do for 
you?” 

“It’s private. I—aw—fawncy you wouldn’t wish 
to be overhead. Not by a darn sight you wouldn’t.” 

“Come in, then, and sit here. No one will over¬ 
hear us.” 

He passed the gate and took the indicated chair, 
leaning his elbow on Carmel’s desk and pointing the 
tip of his long and almost prehensile nose at her 
most convenient ear. 

“Nothin’ was said in the rules of this here contest,” 
said he, “aw—about the character of the—aw— 
contestants.” 

“No.” 

“But suthin’ must ’a’ been intended. You wouldn’t 
want no crim’nal, nor no wife-beater, nor no—aw— 
person addicted to intoxicants to enter, now would 
you. Eh? . . . What?” 

“Naturally not.” 

“If a contestant was sich, what would happen?” 

223 


CONTRABAND 


“It would be necessary to eliminate him.” 

“Cheerio! What price the elimination!” 

“What do you mean, Mr. Bogardus?” 

“I mean,” said he, “there's a feller goin’ to be 
eliminated doggone quick. An’ mebby go to jail to 
boot.” 

“This is rather a serious thing to say.” 

“Meant serious. Nobody kin claw me and git 
away with it. Nobody kin set up to be better dressed 
’n I be, by Jove!—aw—and git away with it. I been 
watchin’, I have, and what I suspected I found out. 
And I’ll swear to it. Eh? What say? Now what, 
Lancelot, old dear?” 

“You are talking about Mr. Bangs!” 

“Lancelot Bangs—that’s him.” 

“What has he done ?” 

“Him? What ho! Oh, I say! Blime if the 
bloody blighter hain’t a bootlegger!” Here George 
became a trifle confused in his British, but what does 
Gibeon know of distinctions between Whitechapel 
and the Hotel Cecil ? 

Carmel was alert at once. This touched the busi¬ 
ness in hand. “A bootlegger. You mean he is sell¬ 
ing whisky?” 

“Is and has been. . . . Hain’t bothered much with 
photographs for a long spell back. Makes his livin’ 
that way. It’s how he can afford them handsome 
cravats from the city.” 

“You’re sure ?” 

“Take my oath to it in court. I’ve heard and 
saw. I’ve tasted out of a bottle.” 

•739 


CONTRABAND 


Here was something tangible at last, a hand on a 
minor tentacle of the affair, but, if clung to and fol¬ 
lowed diligently, it must lead sometime to the oc¬ 
topus head. 

“Where does he get it?” Carmel asked. 

Bogardus shook his head. “That’s all I know. He 
gits it and sells it. Makes him a criminal, don’t it ? 
Eh? What?” 

“It would seem to. . . 

“Disqualifies him, don’t it?” 

“If I can verify what you have told me.” 

“Calc’late I kin fetch you proof,” said George. 

“Very well. Do that and he shall be disqualified.” 

George arose, bowed, took his cane, and moved 
with stateliness to the door. There he paused, 
turned, and smirked. 

“Cheerio!” he said. 

Here was something tangible, a commencement, a 
man who had seen and heard and would take his 
oath! It had not come in an admirable way, but it 
had come—had come as a direct result of the things 
she had printed in the paper. The end of a thread 
which would pass through many snarls before she 
could arrive at the spool, but it would arrive. . . . 
If George Bogardus knew so much, other people 
knew more. In Gibeon were men willing to talk if 
she could attract them to her. But this was slow. 
She felt time would not be given her laboriously 
to follow clues. She must overleap spaces; must 
arrive at something bigger then a petty boot- 
legger. Already, as she knew, Gibeon was aware 

230 


CONTRABAND 


that Deputy Jenney was deputy no longer, but 
sheriff, full fledged and unassailable. . . . She must 
act, and act quickly—or action would be made im¬ 
possible for her. 

Bogardus would fetch her proof. She would not 
wait for Bogardus. . . . Impulse sat in the driver’s 
seat again. Lancelot Bangs was no strong man; he 
would not be difficult to handle. Impulse urged her 
to the attack. She did not stop to reason, for when 
one feels something must be done, it is so easy to 
seize upon the first matter which offers action. She 
was on her feet. 

“I’ll be back in an hour,” she called to Tubal, and 
stepped out upon the street. 

Her heart beat a trifle more quickly as she climbed 
the stairs to Lancelot Bangs’ photographic parlors— 
and as she climbed, she remembered that other visit, 
that mysterious conversation in the back room, over¬ 
heard by her but not comprehended. . . . She com¬ 
prehended it now. 

As she opened the door a bell rang somewhere in 
the mysterious depths of those rooms where Lancelot 
carried on the rites of photography, and the young 
man appeared, a wet print in his fingers. 

“Ah, Miss Lee,” he said, and preened himself. It 
is difficult to preen oneself with a black alpaca apron 
on which reaches from chest to knees, but Lancelot 
was conscious his shoes and necktie were visible. It 
gave him assurance. 

“I want to talk to you, Mr. Bangs,” she said. 

“Certainly! Certainly! Time’s your’n. Hain’t 

231 


CONTRABAND 


many visitors like you comes here. . . . Hain’t never 
had the pleasure of makin’ your portrait.” 

“I didn’t come,” said Carmel, with that discon¬ 
certing directness of which she was mistress, “to talk 
about photographs. I came to talk about whisky.” 

Lancelot reared back upon his heels and his Adam’s 
apple took a mighty heave upward. 

“Whisky?” 

“Exactly. I am going to print in the Free Press 
the story of how you sell whisky in your back room. 
I shall tell whom you have sold whisky to, how much 
you have sold, give the dates.” Carmel was pre¬ 
tending to more knowledge than she possessed, which, 
of course, is the first rule in the game. 

“I— You— ’Tain’t so. I never sold a drop. 
Mebby I give a friend a drink—jest sociable like. 
But I hain’t sold.” 

“Don’t lie to me, Mr. Bangs. I know.” She 
allowed her voice to become less cold. “I don’t want 
to be hard on you, but it looks as if I would have to. 

. . . There’s just one way you can save yourself 
from going to jail.” She dropped that and let it 
lay while he looked it over. 

“Jail!” he said, feebly. 

“Exactly. ... If you will make a clean breast of 
the whole thing to me, tell me where you get the 
liquor, who smuggles it in, all about it, I will give 
you forty-eight hours to get away. . . . I’m not 
after you, Mr. Bangs—but I may have to take you— 
if you aren’t reasonable.” 

“I tell you I never-” 


232 



CONTRABAND 


Carmel stood up and turned to the door. “I’m 
sorry,” she said. ‘Tve given you your chance. . . . 
Good-by.” 

He clutched her arm. “Hey!—wait! Where you 
going?” 

“To lay my information before the authorities.” 

“They—they said the authorities was fixed.” 

Carmel laughed. “That’s better,” she said. “Who 
said the authorities were fixed?” 

“I—I didn’t say that—I didn’t-” He sank on 

a red-plush sofa and covered his face. 

“Now, Mr. Bangs, just tell what you know. You 
don’t want to go to jail. In forty-eight hours you 
can be a long ways from here—and nobody will 
bother about you—if they get hold of somebody more 
important. . . . It’s your last chance. Will you talk 
or not ?” Her hand was on the doorknob again. 
“I—I-” 

“Yes?” 

“They’ll kill me.” 

“Like they did Sheriff Churchill,” she said. 

He stared at her goggle-eyed. “Did they do that ?” 
he asked, in sudden terror. “They didn’t do that. 
I didn’t know nothin’ about it. I thought he run 
off. I-” 

“They won’t kill you if you get away,” she said. 
“Now tell me what you know. Quickly!” she snapped 
out the last word of command as a school-teacher 
might speak to a refractory child. 

“I—I been sellin’. . . . Not much. Jest a few 
cases—once in a while—when I could git it.” 

16 233 





CONTRABAND 


“How much?” 

“I—I don’t know exactly. Sometimes I’d git a 
dozen cases. Sometimes less.” 

“Made quite a nice living for you?” 

“I didn’t git it all. I jest got my commission. . . . 
I had to pay back most of the profit.” 

“How did you get the whisky?” 

“A feller would come and tell me the’ was a ship¬ 
ment cornin’. Then I’d git in my car and go out 
to git what was assigned to me.” 

“Who would tell you?” 

“Sometimes one man, sometimes another.” 

“Who?” her voice was inexorable. 

‘ ‘ Pee wee—mostly. ’ ’ 

“Peewee Bangs—your cousin, is he?” 

“That’s him.” 

“So he would tell you, and you would go to get 
it? Where?” 

“Out to his place.” 

“The Lakeside Hotel?” 

“Yes.” 

“That was headquarters?” 

“Yes.” 

“Other folks went there to get whisky?” 

“I calc’late so. There’d be a lot of cases. I’d run 
my car into the shed, and go in, and when I come 
back she’d be packed.” 

“What others went there?” 

“Different ones. Folks buyin’ private. Peewee 
he’d telephone folks he knowed was buyin’ and they’d 

234 


CONTRABAND 


drive out and leave their cars a-standin’. When they 
come ag’in, there’d be the whisky. They wouldn’t 
never see who put it there.” 

“Who did you sell to?” 

“I don’t want to tell.” 

“You’ve got to tell.” 

He moaned, and then, surrendering utterly, gave 
her a list of his customers. 

“Who did you pay money to?” she asked. 

“Peewee.” 

“Anybody else?” 

“Jest him.” 

“Who else did you see at the Lakeside Hotel when 
you went to get whisky—who else was selling be¬ 
sides Peewee?” 

“I never saw anybody.” 

“Did you ever see Deputy Jenney there?” 

Lancelot’s face turned more ashen. “I never see 
him. I dunno nothin’ about him.” 

“You’ve heard he was in it?” 

“Jest whispers. But nothin’ I can say.” 

“When was the last time you got whisky?” 

He gave her the date, which coincided with her 
finding of the cache in the woods. 

“When do you expect to go again?” 

He hesitated. “I- A feller come to-day. Said I 

could run out to-night. Said the’ was a special-sized 
shipment cornin’. . . .” 

“To-night?” 

“To-night.” 

“Is that all you know ?” 

235 



CONTRABAND 


“Every last thing.” 

“Very well, then. Come with me.” 

“Where? ... You promised-” 

“I’ll keep my promise. Just to my office. Please 
hurry.” 

He followed her with docility, sat by while she 
put his confession into type, signed it, and accom¬ 
panied her to a notary, where he took his oath to the 
truth of the statements therein contained. 

“Now,” said Carmel, “I guess you’d better be 
moving along toward the distance.” 

Lancelot, in abject terror, started for the door, but 
Carmel arrested him. “Wait,” she said, and from its 
hiding place in her desk she took the match box made 
from a brass shell which she had found beside the 
whisky cache. She held it before Lancelot’s eyes. 

“Whose is this?” she asked. 

“B’longs to Deputy Jenney,” he said. “01’ Slim 
Toomey made it fer him out of a shell.” 



CHAPTER XXI 


H ASN’T Mr. Pell come in yet?” Carmel called 
to Tubal. 

“Hain’t seen hide nor hair of him since last night.” 
“Did he say anything about staying away?” 

“Not a word. Mos’ likely he’s all het up learnin’ 
the Chinee language backward, or suthin’, and clean 
forgot the’ was sich a thing as a paper.” 

She thought it queer, but, so occupied was her 
mind with the disclosures of Lancelot Bangs and 
with the events of last night, that the fact of Evan 
Pell’s unexplained absence did not present itself to 
her as a thing demanding immediate investigation. 
. . . She was wondering what to do with the evi¬ 
dence in hand. Where to go for more was a ques¬ 
tion easy to answer. She possessed a list of names, 
any one of whom could be forced to testify, and 
nobody could tell which one of them might assay 
some pure gold of fact which would lead her to her 
destination. She had reached Deputy Jenney. The 
match box was damning, yet it must be corroborated 
by other evidence. . . . Past Jenney the trail did 
not lead. So far it was a blind alley, blocked by the 
bulk of the newly appointed sheriff. In some manner 
she must go around or through him to reach Abner 
Fownes. 


237 


CONTRABAND 


But Abner Fownes was not a man to permit him¬ 
self to be reached. The county was his own now, 
held in the hollow of his hand. Its law-enforcing 
machinery was his private property to turn on or to 
turn off as his needs required. Suppose she did find 
evidence which would touch him with the pitch of 
this affair ? Who would make use of the evidence ? 
Who make the arrest ? 

Could she get to the sheriff’s office to lay before 
Jenney information which would result in his im¬ 
prisonment and in Abner Fownes’s destruction? 
Suppose she went, as she must go, to the prosecuting 
attorney. Suppose warrants were issued? What 
then? Jenney’s office must make the service and 
the arrests. ... It was more thinkable that the 
sun would start suddenly to travel from west 
to east than that such warrants should become 
efficacious. 

She called Jared Whitefield on the telephone, de¬ 
sirous of his advice and assistance in this emergency, 
but Jared, she was informed, had gone away from 
town. He left suddenly after midnight, and had 
stated no destination. . . . Carmel felt terribly alone. 
She felt a need for Evan Pell—some one upon whom 
she could depend, some one to talk with, to discuss 
this thing with. Whitefield was gone. . . . Perhaps 
Evan had accompanied him. But why? She had 
a feeling Jared’s going away was in some manner 
connected with the telegram she sent him from the 
capital. But why had he taken Evan, and why had 
Evan left no word for her. . . . Her sensation was 

238 


CONTRABAND 


of one suddenly deserted by all the world. She felt 
young, inadequate, frightened. 

If pride had not held back her tears she would 
have cried. It would be a wonderful comfort to 
cry—but a young woman engaged on a perilous 
enterprise such as hers could not afford the weakness 
of tears. ... If only Evan Pell were there! 

She was arrested by that thought, by the sharpness 
of her desire for Evan’s presence. For the first time 
she perceived how important was the position he had 
assumed in her affairs. She reviewed their associa¬ 
tion from it& inception, recalled how she had patron¬ 
ized him, almost despised him. She had pitied him 
for his inadequacy, for his dry pedantry. . . . Step 
by step she reviewed the changes which had taken 
place in him, dating these changes from that brutal 
scene before her door, when Jenney had beaten him 
to insensibility. . . . Her sympathy had commenced 
there; admiration had dawned, for it had been given 
her to see that a man who could conduct himself as 
Evan Pell conducted himself on that day contained in 
himself the elements which made up a man. Sub¬ 
merged they might have been, but they were present 
—and not too deep below the surface. She saw again 
that unequal fight; perceived the dauntlessness of the 
young man; the oaken heart of him which would fight 
until it died, fearless, struggling with its last throb to 
reach and tear down its enemy. 

She saw now how he had struggled to perceive; 
how, led by her acid tongue, he had perceived the 
futility of his life, and how he had sought to alter 

239 


CONTRABAND 


it. His manner, his very appearance, had changed. 
. . . And he loved her! Never before had she given 
more than reluctant, pitying thought to his love for 
her, but now it assumed other proportions. . . . She 
was aware of wanting him—not as he wanted her— 
but of wanting him near her, to lean upon, to feel the 
strength of him. . . . 

Until he returned she could do nothing! ... It 
was strange that she, who always had been so self- 
reliant, so sure, so ready to act by herself, should 
require the upholding of another. She could not 
understand it, fancied she had grown weak. She 
rather despised herself. . . . Yet it was a fact. She 
did not strive to overthrow it. It was not to be as¬ 
sailed. She could not go on until Evan Pell re¬ 
turned to help her! 

It was an uneasy, unhappy day, crowded with ap¬ 
prehensions and questionings. . . . With events im¬ 
pending, with peril darkening the immediate future, 
she could do nothing but putter with detail. Yet 
she welcomed the detail—it took her mind off her¬ 
self and her problems. 

“Noon came, and then suppertime. . . . It was not 
her usual custom to return to the office after supper, 
but to-night she did return—to wait for Evan, though 
she did not admit it. He might come back, and she 
wanted to be there to receive him. 

To occupy her mind she took out the books of her 
concern and opened them to study progress. The 
circulation book came first, and she opened it at the 
last entried page. As she spread it before her an 

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envelope lay under her eyes, and upon its face, in 
Evan Pell’s handwriting, was her name. 

Miss Carmel Lee! 

It was the first time she had ever seen her name 
in his handwriting, and she gazed at it with a strange, 
stifled feeling in her breast. ... A letter to her from 
Evan Pell, left in this place where she must find it! 
She lifted it and held it in her fingers. . . . Why 
had he written ? Why left his message in this place ? 
She drew a sudden breath of fright. Could it be he 
had deserted her? Could it be he had found his 
position unbearable and, ashamed to face her, had 
taken this means of telling her? . . . She was over¬ 
mastered by foreboding, feared to open the letter. 

“I must open it,” she said to herself. “1 must.” 

She compelled her fingers to tear the flap and 
to withdraw the letter—even to unfold it so that its 
contents were visible. Her eyes saw Evan’s neat, 
flawless handwriting, but her mind seemed suddenly 
numb, unable to make sense of the symbols set down 
upon the paper. She shook her head as if to clear 
it of something damp and heavy and obscuring, and 
forced herself to read. 

“My Dear :” (The letter began, and she read over 
and over those tw’o intimate words)—“My dear: If 
you find this letter—if I have not returned to take it 
from the place in which I have hidden it for you, I 
am quite sure I shall not see you again. In view of 
this possibility I am presuming to say good-by.” 
Even now, she saw, something of his pedantic pre¬ 
cision must creep in. It would not have crept in, 

241 


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she felt sure, had he not been under some strong 
emotion, had he not felt the necessity for concealing 
his emotion. “I have told you before,” the letter 
continued, “that I love you. I have not told you how 
I have come willingly, eagerly to love you. You, and 
you alone—the fact of your existence, your loveli¬ 
ness—have made what I fancy are notable changes 
in me. I even go so far as to imagine I might, with 
time and persistence, become the sort of man who 
would be entitled to your friendship, if nothing more. 
But, if this letter reaches your eyes, that is, I fear, 
no longer possible. I think I have done as I should, 
although I have practiced deception. When you re¬ 
member I did this because I loved you, I trust you 
will find it in your heart to forgive me. 

“To-day there came a note to you which I inter¬ 
cepted. It purported to come from some disgruntled 
man, telling you how you could obtain evidence 
against these liquor smugglers by going to the Lake¬ 
side Hotel. I rather fancied it was not genuine, and 
was meant rather to induce your presence than to 
betray confederates. On the other hand, it might be 
authentic. I therefore urged you to make the jour¬ 
ney upon which you have just been engaged, and, 
because it seemed right to do so, I am going to-night 
to test the authenticity of the letter.” 

She saw, she understood! 

“If it prove to be a lure, such as was used to the 
undoing of Sheriff Churchill, there is some small 
chance I shall not return. Naturally I shall observe 
every caution. But if precautions fail and I do not 

242 


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return, you will find in a box in my room such evi¬ 
dence and information as I have collected. It does 
not reach the man we wish to reach, but it moves 
toward him. I hope you will be able to make use 
of it.” 

He could write so stiltedly of making use of his 
work when he was, open-eyed, going out to walk 
into the trap prepared for her! 

“Therefore,” the letter concluded, “good-by. My 
going will mean little to you; it means little to me, 
except the parting from you. If you find time to 
think of me at all, I hope you will think of me as 
continuing always to love you wherever it may be I 
have journeyed. Good-by.” 

At the end he had signed his name. 

She sat for a moment as though turned to stone. 
Her heart was dead, her faculties benumbed. . . . 
He was dead! She had found and read the letter, 
so he must be dead—vanished as Sheriff Churchill 
had vanished, never to be seen again by mortal eye. 
. . . And for her! He had gone out calmly, se¬ 
renely, to face whatever might beset his path—for 
her. He had given his life for her, to preserve her 
life! 

She sat very still. Her cheeks were white and she 
was cold, cold as death. No sound came from her 
compressed lips. Dead! . . . Evan Pell was dead! 

Then something not of her own consciousness, 
something deep within the machinery of her soul, 
moved and controlled her. She acted, but not as one 
acts of his own volition, rather as one acts in a mes- 

243 


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meric trance. . . . Her impulse was to go to find 
him—to find him, to weep over him ... to avenge 
him! 

She snatched the receiver from its hook and tele¬ 
phoned Jared Whitefield again. He would help. 
He would know what to do. But Jared Whitefield 
had not returned. . . . She must act alone. 

Calmly, like an automaton, she put on her hat, ex¬ 
tinguished the lights, locked the door, and walked 
up the street. The direction she took was toward 
the Lakeside Hotel. She reached the fringe of the 
village which bordered upon the black woods, but 
did not pause. Steadily, urged on by some inex¬ 
orable force, she continued down that gloomy avenue, 
between woodland banks of inky blackness. . . . 
She neither hesitated nor paused nor looked behind 
her. 

Had she looked behind it may have been she would 
have seen the shadowy figures of two men who fol¬ 
lowed, followed stealthily keeping always a stated 
distance, drawing no nearer, flitting at the edge of 
the blackness. 


CHAPTER XXII 


A BNER FOWNES was apprehensive. Notwith- 
* standing his success in obtaining the appoint¬ 
ment of Deputy Jenney as sheriff and the utter dis¬ 
comfiture of Carmel Lee, uneasiness possessed him. 
He felt driven, pursued. Events marshaled their 
forces against him with a sort of sinister inexor¬ 
ability. Being a man of superior intelligence, he 
was able to see the intricacies and dangers of his 
position more surely than a lesser man could have 
done; and as he sat in the train on his return to 
Gibeon he took stock of himself, reviewed the past, 
and prepared himself for the future. 

To see Carmel Lee in the capital was a shock. He 
had not expected to see her, but, on the coatrary, was 
awaiting reports on the success of his plan to elimi¬ 
nate her. ... It was his first piece of bad luck; the 
first time things had worked out crookedly for him, 
and it alarmed him. Every successful man believes 
in his luck, and now Fownes was apprehensive lest 
luck had deserted him. 

That Carmel had accused him of crimes in the 
Governor’s presence did not alarm him especially— 
except for this: that anybody would dare to speak 
such words concerning him. It was not the thing 
uttered, the person who listened, but that fact of the 

245 


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utterance. Hitherto people had been afraid of him, 
but this girl was unafraid. ... It must mean some¬ 
thing, some turning of the tide. He felt a trembling 
of his foundations. 

It is at such a moment that a man of Fownes’s type 
is most to be feared. He was vain; his position in the 
world meant more to him than any other considera¬ 
tion. To have that position assailed, to face the pos¬ 
sibility of being thrust from his eminence in ig¬ 
nominy, was an eventuality he would avert by 
any means within reach of his hand. Indeed, he 
had already reached for the weapon—but luck had 
intervened. 

He felt stifled by adversities. Never before had 
he doubted his ability to come through this emer¬ 
gency with satisfaction to himself. He had believed 
in himself. Even when he had been forced outside 
the law to protect his position, he regarded it only 
as a makeshift, undesirable, perhaps, but necessary 
to him, and therefore permissible. It had been his 
intention to stabilize his business again, and then to 
withdraw to lawful practices and a life of conscious 
rectitude. . . . But adversities, of late, erected them¬ 
selves with such rapidity! Money was required of 
him when he had hoped promises to pay would have 
sufficed; he was rushed into expedients endangering 
the whole edifice of his life. So far there had been 
no slip, but he was intelligent enough to perceive there 
might be a slip. . . . 

A slip would not be so dangerous if it were not 
that Carmel Lee were standing, watching always, 

246 


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ready to pounce upon any mishap. She and that pro¬ 
fessor fellow ! . . . Evan Pell, with a natural adapt¬ 
ability for snooping. Fownes had him dismissed 
from the schools because he snooped into his affairs. 
. . . It was therefore essential that both these indi¬ 
viduals should be rendered no longer a menace. 

There was Sheriff Churchill. . . . Well, there 
was something which could never be brought home 
to him. It had been well and successfully managed. 
. . . But he wanted no more of that—unless abso¬ 
lute necessity demanded. 

If he could have married the girl! That would 
have shut her mouth and at the same time have given 
him a desirable wife—one whom he would have 
taken pride in introducing into such functions as that 
which he had attended at the capital. . . . But he 
could not marry her. . . . She could be made to dis¬ 
appear as Churchill had disappeared—but three dis¬ 
appearances would be rather too many. If three per¬ 
sons vanished, folks would regard it as rather more 
than a coincidence. Therefore Carmel and Pell would 
not vanish unless all other expedients failed. 

If, however, he could keep his word to her; if he 
could smash her life, place her in a position which 
would overwhelm her, destroy her self-respect, send 
her crashing down in some infamous way—that 
would serve so much better. . . . He had found the 
way to do it, but luck intervened. Instead of being 
where he intended she should be, Carmel appeared 
safely in the capital—and multiplied the danger she 
represented. 


247 


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He wondered if the whole scheme had gone awry. 
There was no word from Jenney. Nothing as to 
the whereabouts of Evan Pell. Pell was of impor¬ 
tance in Fownes’s plan—indispensable to it. Deputy 
Jenney was indispensable to it, as were Peewee Bangs 
and his Lakeside Hotel. . . . The plan had been so 
simple and would have been so effective. 

If Carmel had not gone to the capital, but, instead, 
had adventured to the Lakeside Hotel to investigate 
the mysterious note—the rest was simple. She 
would have been followed; Pell would have been 
followed. To seize and imprison the pair in a room 
in the unsavory Lakeside Hotel would have been a 
mere matter of a couple of strong arms. ... To im¬ 
prison them in the same room! Following that, the 
room being set according to the demands of the 
occasion, the hotel would have been raided. Deputy 
Jenney, that public-spirited official, would have con¬ 
ducted the raid. . . . The posse would have found 
Carmel and Pell in their room, surrounded by evi¬ 
dences of such orgies as the Lakeside was famous 
for. They would have been arrested together, taken 
to the jail. . . . That was all, but it would have 
sufficed. Never again could Carmel hold up her 
head; she would be destroyed utterly, driven out of 
Gibeon, made forever ineffective. It was really better 
than killing her outright. . . . 

Abner alighted at Gibeon’s depot and was driven 
to his office. He summoned Jenney, who came with 
alacrity. 

“Well, Sheriff?” said Abner, jocularly. 

248 


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“Much obleeged,” said Jenney. 

“What happened?” 

“The girl went off some’eres in Whitefield's auto. 
Didn’t git back till some time in the momin’. . . . 
But we got him ” 

“Eh?” 

“We got him—the perfessor.” 

Fownes considered that. They had the professor 
—but he was worse than useless alone, he was a 
menace. So long as Carmel Lee was at liberty, Evan 
Pell, as a prisoner, was a constant danger. No tell¬ 
ing what the girl would do. Besides, she was allied 
with Jared Whitefield—and Whitefield was no man 
to overlook. Abner scowled. 

“Where is he?” 

“Out to Peewee’s.” 

“He went out there?” 

“Came spyin’ around. Kind of clever about it, 
too. We almost missed him. . . . But we didn’t?” 

“Is he hurt ?” 

“Mussed up some. No hurt to speak of.” 

“And to-night the big shipment comes in.” 

“Your orders.” 

“We’ve got to get the girl,” Abner said. “Have 
her watched every instant. Have everything in 
readiness. If she puts her foot in a spot where you 
and your men can take her, don’t lose a minute.” 
His voice lifted with excitement. “Get her. Do you 
hear? . . . Get her!” 

“Where’s Whitefield?” Jenney said. 

“How should I know?” 

17 249 


CONTRABAND 


“I want to know. ... You can't handle him like 
you can this girl. He’s gone some’eres, and I want 
to know where and why.” 

Fownes scowled, but made no rejoinder. 

“I don’t like the way things is goin’,” Jenney said, 
sulkily. “I feel like I was gittin’ cornered.” 

“You’re sheriff, aren’t you? Who ’ll corner you. 
You’re frightened, Jenney. Men who get frightened 
aren’t useful to me. Now, get out of here. You 
know what you’ve got to do. Do it.” 

“Town meetin’ to-morrer. I got to be there.” 

“You’ll be some place beside at a town meeting, 
Sheriff, if that girl is allowed to run around another 
twenty-four hours. . . . Git!” 

Jenney went out slowly, much perturbed. He 
was a man of consequence to-day. Yesterday 
he had been nobody but Deputy Jenney, a political 
henchman, a nobody. To-day his life’s ambi¬ 
tion was realized; he bestrode the pinnacle of his 
hopes. He had achieved the. position toward 
which he had labored and schemed for a dozen 
years. What happened to Deputy Jenney was 
more or less inconsequential. As Deputy Jenney 
he dared take chances—for money or for advance¬ 
ment. But as Sheriff Jenney! . . . That was 
a different matter. Very gladly, now, would he 
have extricated himself from his entanglements 
and conducted himself as, according to his system 
of ethics, a man of mark should do. Why, he 
was the biggest man in the county—with a salary 
and fees and patronage! . . . Well, he was in it 

250 


CONTRABAND 

and he must protect himself. . . . Damn Fownes, 
anyhow. 

He did not pause to consider that without Fownes 
and his connection with the whisky-smuggling indus¬ 
try he would never have become sheriff. . . . That 
was forgotten. Like many men, he ignored the lad¬ 
der by which he had climbed. In this case, however, 
the ladder declined to ignore him. If Jenney had 
ever heard the word sardonic he would have made 
telling use of it now. . . . How many men are tram¬ 
meled by inadequate vocabularies! 

His first step was cautiously to call Peewee Bangs 
by telephone, and in his conversation Jenney dis¬ 
closed a kind of apt and helpful humor of which 
few would have accused him. 

“Hello, Peewee 1” he said. “That you?” 

“It’s me, Sheriff.” 

“H’m! . . . Got that bundle of school books 
safe?” Jenney chuckled a little at this. He con¬ 
sidered it very acute indeed—to describe Evan Pell 
as a bundle of school books. 

“Got ’em tight,” said Peewee. “And the book¬ 
case door ’s locked. Was jest lookin’ ’em over. 
Gittin’ me an eddication, so to say.” 

“Was the bindin’s injured much?” 

“Not to speak of. One of the covers was tore 
off, but it kin be patched on ag’in with glue, seems 
as though. Hain’t no pages tore.” 

“It’s too bad we got to keep ’em alone,” said 
Jenney. “I’m figgerin’ on addin’ to the lib’rary. 
. . . Durin’ the day or night. You be ready to take 

251 


CONTRABAND 


care of another volume. ’Tain’t so educational as 
the other figgers to be, but it’s put up in a dum sight 
pertier cover.” 

“I git you,” said Peewee. “The librarian ’ll be on 
the job. Got any idee what hour you’ll deliver?” 

“May be any hour. Sit tight, and don’t on no ac¬ 
count lose what we got. What we want, Peewee, is 
a nice, complete eddication, and we can’t git it ’less 
we have both them books to study side by side.” 

“Uh huh. . . An’ say, Sheriff, the pantry’s all 
ready fer that shipment of catchup. Quite a con¬ 
signment, eh? Never had so much catchup in the 
house before.” 

“Too doggone much. I was ag’in it. . . . But 
it’s cornin’, and we got to look out f’r it.” 

“Five loads,” said Peewee. 

“Cornin’ different roads.” 

“Mebby ye kin dispose of some of it if the order’s 
too big fer your own use.” 

“I kind of arranged to,” said Peewee. “Every¬ 
thin’s all right this end” 

“For Gawd’s sake,” said Jenney, betraying for a 
moment his anxiety, “don’t let nothin’ slip.” 

“I’ll tend to my end if you tend to your’n,” snapped 
Mr. Bangs. 

Directly following this conversation, Jenney de¬ 
tailed two trustworthy gentlemen to keep an eye on 
Carmel Lee. It was pointed out to them to be their 
duty not to lose sight of her an instant, and, on pain 
of certain severe penalties, to let no opportunity slip 
to induce her to join Evan Pell at the Lakeside Hotel. 

252 


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... It was these two gentlemen who, gratefully, 
saw her take her way out of town in the late eve¬ 
ning, following the very road they would have chosen 
for her. They made sure she was alone, that no one 
was coming after her, and then took to themselves 
the office of escort. Quite gleefully they followed 
her, as she, unconscious of their presence, trudged 
toward the hotel. She was so thoughtful as to save 
them even the small trouble of transporting her. 

4 ‘Like the feller that let the bear chase him into 
camp so’s he could shoot his meat nigh home,” whis¬ 
pered one of the gentlemen. 

Carmel proceeded rapidly; too rapidly for such 
precautions as she should have observed. She was 
without plan; her mind was in such chaos as to 
render planning futile. Instinct alone was not inac¬ 
tive. ... No matter how shaken the objective 
faculties may be, those superior subjective intuitions 
and inhibitions and urgings never sleep. Their busi¬ 
ness is so largely with the preservation of the body 
which they inhabit that they dare not sleep. 

Quite without thinking; without a clear idea why 
she did so, Carmel turned off the road and took to 
the woods. Self-preservation was at work. Instinct 
was in control. . . . The gentlemen behind quickened 
their pace, disgruntled at this lack of consideration 
on the part of their quarry. ... It was with some 
difficulty they found the place where she entered 
the woods. . . . Carmel herself had vanished utterly. 
In that black maze, a tangle of slashings, a huddle of 
close-growing young spruce, it was impossible to 

253 


CONTRABAND 


descry her, to tell in which direction she had turned. 
Nor did they dare make use of a flashlight in an 
effort to follow her trail. However, they must 
needs do something, so, keeping the general direction 
of the hotel, paralleling the road, they proceeded 
slowly, baffled, but hopeful. . ♦ . 




254 


CHAPTER XXIII 


TT is not easy for one unaccustomed to the woods 
-■* to remain undeviatingly upon his course even in 
the daytime; at night it can be accomplished only by 
a miracle. Carmel, in a state of agitation which was 
not distant from hysteria, had paused neither to 
consider nor to take her bearings. Of herself she 
was utterly careless. The only thought in her mind 
was to reach, and in some manner to give aid to, 
Evan Pell if he remained alive. Instinct alone 
moved her to turn off the road and seek the protec¬ 
tion of the forest. Once engulfed in its blackness 
she stumbled alone, tripping, falling, turning, twist¬ 
ing—hurrying, always hurrying. . . . The physical 
exertion cleared her brain, reduced her to something 
like rationality. 

She paused, leaned panting against the bole of a 
great beech . . . and discovered she was lost. 

The evening had been cloudy, but now the clouds 
were being dissipated by an easterly breeze—a chilly 
breeze—and from time to time the moon peered 
through to turn the blackness of the woods into a 
cavern, dim-lit, filled with moving, grotesque alarm¬ 
ing shadows. The shape of fear lurks always in 
the forest. It hides behind every tree, crouches in 
every thicket, ready to leap out upon the back of 

255 


CONTRABAND 


him who shall for an instant lay aside the protective 
armor of his presence of mind. The weapon of fear 
is panic. . . . Fear perches upon the shoulder, whis¬ 
pering: “You are lost. You know not which way 
to go. . . . You have lost your way.” Then there 
arises in the heart and brain of the victim a sensation 
so horrible that words cannot describe it; it can be 
realized only by those who have experienced it. It 
is a combination of emotions and fears, comparable 
to nothing. ... It is a living, clutching, torturing 
horror. First comes apprehension, then bewilder¬ 
ment. A frenzied effort to discover some landmark, 
to tear from the forest the secret of the points of 
the compass. One determines to sit calmly and re¬ 
flect ; to proceed coolly. . . . The thing is impossible. 
One sits while the watch ticks fifty times, and is sure 
he has rested for hours. He arises, takes two steps 
with studied deliberation, and finds he is running, 
bursting through slashings and underbrush in un¬ 
reasoning frenzy. And frenzy thrives upon itself. 
One wishes to shout, to scream. . . . Fear chokes 
him, engulfs him. Reason deserts utterly, and there 
remains nothing but horror, panic. . . . 

Carmel experienced this and more. Throbbing, 
rending terror was hers, yet, even at the height of 
her panic, there lay beneath it, making it more hor¬ 
rible, her fear for Evan Pell. She uttered his name. 
Sobbing, she called to him—and always, always she 
struggled forward under the urge of panic. Even 
the little nickel-plated electric flash in her pocket was 
forgotten. That would have been something — light ! 

256 


CONTRABAND 


It would have been a comfort, a hope. . . . How 
long she ran and fell, picked herself up to stagger 
onward to another fall, she did not know. For 
minutes the woods were an impenetrable gulf of 
blackness; then the moon would emerge to permit 
its eerie light to trickle through the interlacing 
foliage, and to paint grotesque patterns upon the 
ground beneath her feet. Threatening caverns 
loomed; mysterious sounds assailed her. . . . She 
was sobbing, crying Evan Pell’s name. And then— 
with startling suddenness—the woods ceased to be, 
and light was. . . . The heavens were clean swept of 
clouds, and the moon, round and full, poured down 
the soft silver of its radiance—a radiance reflected, 
mirrored, turned to brighter silver by the rippled 
waters of the lake. . . . Carmel sank in a pitiful 
little heap and cried—they were tears of relief. She 
had reached the lake. 

It was possible to reason now. She had turned 
from the road to the right. The Lakeside Hotel was 
to the left of the road, and, therefore, she had but 
to skirt the shore of the lake, traveling to leftward, 
and she must reach her destination. 

She arose, composed herself, and, womanlike, ar¬ 
ranged her hat and hair. Then, keeping close to 
the water for fear she might again become bewildered 
and so lose this sure guide, she started again toward 
her objective. 

As she turned a jutting point of land she saw, a 
quarter of a mile distant, the not numerous lights 
which indicated the presence of Bangs’s ill-reputed 

25 7 


CONTRABAND 


hostelry. This sure realization of the nearness of 
danger awakened caution. It awakened, too, a sense 
of her futility. Now that she was where something 
must be done, what was there possible for her to do ? 
What did she mean to do? . . . She could not an¬ 
swer, but, being an opportunist, she told herself that 
events should mold her actions; that some course 
would open before her when need for it became 
imminent. 

Small things she noted—inconsequential things. 
The lake had fallen during the dry weather. She 
noted that. It had receded to leave at its edge a 
ribbon of mud, sometimes two feet, sometimes six 
feet wide. . . . This was one of those inconse¬ 
quential, extraneous facts which appear so sharply 
and demand attention when the mind is otherwise 
vitally occupied. . . . She noted the thick-growing 
pickerel grass growing straight and slender and 
thrusting its spears upward through the scarcely 
agitated water. It was lovely in the moonlight. . . . 
She noted the paths upon the water, paths which 
began without reason and wound off to no destina¬ 
tion. . . . Her eyes were busy, strangely busy, photo¬ 
graphically occupied. No detail of that nocturne 
but would be printed indelibly upon the retina of 
her brain so long as she should live. . . . Details, 
details, details! 

Then she stopped! Her hand flew to her breast 
with sudden gesture and clutched the bosom of her 
waist. She started back, trembling. . . . Was that 
a log lying half upon the muddy ribbon, half sub- 

258 


CONTRABAND 


merged in the receded waters of the lake? She 
hoped it was a log, but there was something— some¬ 
thing which arrested her, compelled her. ... If it 
were a log it was such a log as she never had seen be¬ 
fore. ... It had not a look of hard solidity, but 
rather of awful limpness, of softness. It sprawled 
grotesquely. It was still, frightfully still. . . . She 
gathered her courage to approach; stood upon the 
grassy shelf above this shape which might have been 
a log but seemed not to be a log, and bent to peer 
downward upon it. . . . 

She thought she screamed, but she did not. No 
sound issued from her throat, although her lips 
opened. . . . She fell back, covering her face. . . . 
The log was no log; it was no twisted, grotesque 
driftwood. ... It was the body of a man, the limbs 
of a man fearfully extended. . . . 

Carmel felt ill, dizzy. She struggled against 
faintness. Then the searing, unbearable thought 
—was it Evan? . . . She must know, she must 
determine. . . . 

Alone with the thing beneath her, with the fear¬ 
some woods behind her, with the lonely, coldly glit¬ 
tering lake before her, it was almost beyond belief 
that she should find the courage to determine. . . . 
Something within her, something stronger than hor¬ 
ror, than terror, laid its hand upon her and compelled 
her. She could not, dared not, believe it was Evan 
Pell. 

From her pocket she drew the little, nickel-plated 
flashlight and pressed its button. Then, covering 

259 


CONTRABAND 


her eyes, she forced herself inch by inch to approach 
the lip of the grassy shelf. . . . She could not look, 
but she must look. . . . First she pointed the beam 
of the light downward, her eyes tight-closed. Clench¬ 
ing her fist, biting her lips, she put every atom of 
strength in her body to the task of forcing the lids 
of her eyes to open—and she looked, looked full 
upon the awful thing at her feet. 

For an instant sickness, frightful repulsion, horror, 
was held at bay by relief. ... It was not Evan. 
Those soggy garments were not his; that bulk was 
not his. . . . She dared to look again, and let none 
decry the courage required to perform this act. . . . 
It was a terrible thing to see. . . . Her eyes dared 
not remain upon the awful, bearded face. They 
swept downward to where the coat, lying open, dis¬ 
closed the shirt. . . . Upon the left bosom of the 
shirt was a metal shape. Carmel stared at it—and 
stared. ... It was a star, no longer bright and 
glittering, but unmistakably a star. . . . 

Then, instantly, Carmel Lee knew what had be¬ 
come of Sheriff Churchill. . . . 

It was enough; she was required to look no more. 

. . The spot was accursed, unendurable, and she fled 
from it; fled toward the lights of the Lakeside Hotel. 
. . . That they were lights of which she could not 
beg shelter she did not think; that she was safer 
with the thing which the lake had given up she did 
not consider. That the living to whom she fled were 
more frightful than the dead whom she deserted 
was not for her to believe in that moment. She 

260 


CONTRABAND 

I 

must have light; she must feel the presence of human 
beings, hear human voices—it mattered not whose 
they were. 

Presently, forcing her way through a last obstruc¬ 
tion of baby spruces, she reached the thoroughfare, 
and there, hidden by the undergrowth, she stood, 
looking for the first time upon this group of build¬ 
ings so notorious in the county, so important in her 
own affairs. The hotel itself, a structure of frame 
and shingles, stretched along the lake—a long, low, 
squatting, sinister building. A broad piazza stretched 
from end to end, and from its steps a walk led down 
to a wharf jutting into the water. To the rear were 
barns and sheds and an inclosure hidden from the 
eye by a high lattice—a typical roadhouse of the least 
desirable class. . . . She searched such of its win¬ 
dows as were lighted. Human figures moved to and 
fro in the room which must have been the dining 
room. An orchestra played. . . . 

She had been on the spot but a moment when she 
heard the approaching engine of some motor vehicle. 
She waited. A huge truck, loaded high and covered 
with a tarpaulin, drew up to the gate at the rear of 
the hotel. Its horn demanded admittance, the gate 
opened and it rolled in. . . . She waited, uncertain. 
Another truck appeared—high loaded as the first— 
and was admitted. . . . Then, in quick succession, 
three others. . . . Five trucks loaded to capacity— 
and Carmel knew well what was their load! . . . 
Contraband! ... Its value to be counted not by 
thousands of dollars, but by tens of thousands! 

261 


( 


CONTRABAND 


The facts were hers now, but what was she to do 
with them? To whom report them? . . . And 
there was Evan. What mattered contraband whisky 
when his fate was in doubt ? Evan Pell came first— 
she realized now that he came first, before every¬ 
thing, before herself! . . . She asked no questions, 
but accepted the fact. 

Keeping to the roadside in the shadows, she picked 
her way along for a couple of hundred feet, mean¬ 
ing to cross the road and to make her way to the 
rear of the hotel's inclosure. There must be some 
opening through which she might observe what 
passed and so make some discovery which might 
be of use to her in her need. . . . She paused, unde¬ 
cided, determined a sudden, quick crossing would 
be safest, and, lifting her skirts, ran out upon the 
roadway. . . . 

There was a shout, a rush of feet. She felt un¬ 
gentle hands, and, dropping such inhibitions as 
generations of civilization had imposed upon her, 
Carmel fought like a wildcat, twisting, scratching, 
tearing. . . . She was crushed, smothered. Her 
arms were twisted behind her, a cloth jerked roughly 
over her face, and she felt herself lifted in powerful 
arms. . . . They carried her to some door, for she 
heard them rap for admission. 

“Who's there?" said a voice. 

“Fetch Peewee," said one of her captors. “Quick.” 

Then came a short wait, and she heard Peewee 
Bangs's nasal voice. “What's up?" he demanded. 

“We got her. What '11 we do with her?" 

262 


CONTRABAND 


“Fetch her in,” said Peewee. “Up the back stairs. 
I’ll show ye the way.” 

Carmel, not struggling now, was carried up a nar¬ 
row flight of steps; she heard a key turn in a lock. 
Then she was thrust into a room, pushed so that she 
stumbled and went to her knees. The door slammed 
behind her and was locked again. . . . She got to 
her feet, trembling, wavering, snatched the cloth 
from her face, and looked before her. . . . There, in 
the dim light, she saw a man. He stood startled, 
staring with unbelieving eyes. 

“Evan! . . .” she cried. “Evan! . . . Thank 
God you’re alive.” 


263 


CHAPTER XXIV 

t 

H E did not come toward her; did not move from 
his place, and then she saw that he stood only 
by clinging to the back of a chair. . . . He leaned 
forward and stared at her through eyes drawn by 
pain. 

“You’re hurt! . . . They’ve hurt you!” she cried. 
“My ankle only,” he said. “Sprained, I fancy.” 
Then, “What are you doing here?” He spoke al¬ 
most petulantly as one would speak to a naughty 
child who turns up in some embarrassing spot. 

“I—I found your letter,” she said. 

“My letter? . . . Ah yes, my letter. . . . Then 
I—I brought you into this trap.” 

“No. . . . Evan, it was a fine thing you did. For 
me. You—have come to this for me.” 

“It was an exceedingly unintelligent thing—writ¬ 
ing that letter.” 

“Listen, Evan. ... As long as I live I shall be 
glad you wrote it. I am glad, glad. ... to know 
there is a man capable of—of sacrificing and— 
maybe dying for-” 

“Nonsense!” said Evan. “It was a trap, of course. 
And I thought my mental caliber was rather larger 
than that of these people. Very humiliating.” He 
frowned at her. “Why did you have to come?” 

264 



CONTRABAND 


“You ask that?” 

“I most certainly do ask it. You had no business 
to come. Wasn’t my failure to return a sufficient 
warning? . . . Why did you take this foolish risk?” 

“You don’t know?” 

“I want to know,” he said with the severity of a 
schoolmaster cross-questioning a refractory pupil. 

“Must I tell?” 

“You must.” Carmel was almost able to see the 
humor of it. A pathetic shadow of a smile lighted 
her face. 

“I didn’t want to—to tell it this way,” she said. 

UJ 1J 

“Will you be so good as to give me a direct an¬ 
swer? Why did you come rushing here—headlong 

—when you knew perfectly well-” He paused 

and his severe eyes accused her. 

She moved a step closer; her hands fluttered up 
from her side and dropped again; she bit her 
lip. “Because,” she said, in the lowest of voices, “I 
love you—and—and where you were I—wanted 
to be.” 

The chair which supported Evan tipped forward 
and clattered again into place. He stared at her as 
if she were some very strange laboratory specimen 
indeed, and then said in his most insistently didactic 
voice, punctuating his words with a waggling fore¬ 
finger, “You don’t mean to stand there—and to tell 
me —that you love me!” 

Carmel gave a little laugh. 

“Don’t you want me to?” 

18 265 




CONTRABAND 


“That,” he said, “is beside the question. ... You 
4 . . you . . . love met” 

She nodded. 

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “You couldn’t. 
Nobody could. . . . I’ve been studying this—er— 
matter of love, and I am assured of my complete 
unfitness to arouse such an emotion.” 

Her heart misgave her. “Evan—you—you love 
me?” 

“I do,” he said, emphatically. “Most assuredly I 
do, but-” 

“Then it’s all right,” she said. 

“It’s not all right. ... I don’t in the least be¬ 
lieve you—er—reciprocate my feeling for you. . . . 
You are—er—deceiving me for some reason.” 

“Evan—please—oh-” Her lips quivered and 

her voice became tearful. “You—you’re making it 
—terribly hard. Girls don’t usually have to—to ar¬ 
gue with men to—to make them believe they love 
them. . . . You—you’re hurting me.” 

“I—er—have no intention of doing so. In fact 
I—I would not hurt you for—anything in the world. 
... As a matter of—of fact, I want to—prevent 
you from being hurt. ...” At this point he bogged 
down, the wheels of his conversation mired, and 
progress ceased. 

“Then,” demanded Carmel, “why do you make me 
do it?” 

“Do what?” 

“Propose to you, Evan Pell. It’s not my place. 
I have to do all the courting. ... If you—you want 

266 




CONTRABAND 

me, why don’t you say so—and—and ask me to 
marry you?” * 

“You—you’d marry me?” 

*T don’t know. . . . Not—I won’t say another 
word until you’ve asked me—as—as a man should.” 

He drew a deep breath and, bending forward, 
searched her face with hungry eyes. What he saw 
must have satisfied him, given him confidence, for 
he threw back his shoulders. “I can’t come to you,” 
he said, gently. “I want to come to you. I want 
to be close to you, and to tell you how I love you— 
how my love for you has changed my life. ... I 
—my manner—it was because I couldn’t believe— 
because the idea that you—you could ever see any¬ 
thing in me to—to admire—was so new. I never 
believed you—could. . . . I—was satisfied to love 
you. But—Carmel—if you can—if some miracle 
has made you care for a poor creature like me—I 
shall— Oh, my dear!—it will make a new world, 
a wonderful and beautiful w T orld. . . . I—I can’t 
come to you. Will you—come to me?” 

She drew closer slowly, almost reluctantly, and 
stood before him. His grave, starving eyes looked 
long into hers. 

“My—my dear!” he said, huskily, and_kneeling 
upon the chair with his sound leg—in order to re¬ 
lease his arms for more essential purposes, he held 
them out to her. . . . 

“Your arms are strong,” she said presently. “I 
had no idea. . . . You are very strong.” 

“I—exercise with a rowing machine,” he said. 

267 


CONTRABAND 


. . . And then: “Now we must think. . . . I didn’t 
much care—before. Now I have something to live 
for.” 

His words brought Carmel back to the realities, 
to the prison room in which they were locked, and 
to the men below stairs who had made them prisoners 
for their sinister purposes. 

“I have found Sheriff Churchill,” she said. 

“His body?” 

She nodded. “And this house is full of contra¬ 
band liquor. Five big trucks—loaded. . . .” 

“All of which is useless information to us here.” 

“What—do you think they will do with us ?” 

Evan turned away his head and made no answer. 

Carmel clutched his arm. “Oh, they wouldn’t. 
. . . They couldn’t. ... Not now. Nothing can 
happen to us now.” 

“At any rate,” he said, gravely, “we have this. It 
is something.” 

“But I want more. I want happiness—alive with 
you. . . . Oh, we must do something—something.” 

“Sit down,” he said. “Please—er—be calm. I 
will see what is to be done.” 

He sank into the chair, and she sat close beside 
him, clinging to his hand. Neither spoke. ... At 
the sound of footsteps in the hall outside their heads 
lifted and their eyes fastened upon the door. A key 
grated in the lock and the door swung inward, per¬ 
mitting Peewee Bangs to enter. He stood grinning 
at them—the grin distorting his pinched, hunchback’s 
face. 


268 


CONTRABAND 


“Well,” he said, “here you be—both of ye. How 
d’ye like the accommodations?” 

Peewee evidently came to talk, not to be talked to, 
for he did not wait for an answer. 

Folks that go meddlin’ in other folkses’ business 
ought to be more careful,” he said. “But numbers 
hain’t. . . . Now you was gittin’ to be a dummed 
nuisance. We’ve talked about you consid’able. . . . 
And say, we fixed it so’s you hain’t goin’ to be 
missed for a day or so. Uh huh. Had a feller tele¬ 
phone from the capital sayin’ you was back there 
on business.” 

“What—are you going to do with us?” Carmel 
asked. 

“Nothin’ painful—quite likely. If you was to turn 
up missin’ that ’u’d make too many missin’ folks. 
... So you hain’t a-goin’ to. Nope. We calc’late 
on havin’ you found—public like. Sure thing. Sher¬ 
iff’s goin’ to find ye.” 

“Sheriff Jenney?” 

“That’s him. . . . We’re goin’ to kind of arrange 
this room a little—like you ’n’ that teacher feller’d 
been havin’ a nice leetle party here. Understand? 

. . . Plenty to drink and sich.” He drew his head 
back upon his distorted shoulders and looked up at 
them with eyes in which burned the fire of pure 
malice. Carmel turned away from him to determine 
from Evan’s face if he understood Bangs’s meaning. 
It was clear he did not. 

“Don’t git the idea, eh?” Peewee asked, with evi¬ 
dent enjoyment. “Wa-al, since we got a good sheriff 

269 


CONTRABAND 


and one that kin be depended on, things is different 
here. He’s all for upholdin’ the law, and he aims 
to make an example out of me.” 

“Sheriff Jenney make an example of you!” Car¬ 
mel exclaimed. 

“Funny, hain’t it? But that’s the notion. You 
bet you. . . . Goin’ to kind of raid my hotel, like 
you might say, and git evidence ag’in’ me. Dunno’s 
he’ll find much. More ’n likely he won’t. . . . But 
he’ll find you two folks—he’ll come rampagin’ in here 
and find you together as cozy as bugs in a rug.” 
Peewee stopped to laugh with keen enjoyment of 
the humorous situation he described. “He’ll find 
you folks here, and he’ll find how you been together 
to-night and all day to-morrer. . . . And plenty 
of refreshments a-layin’ around handy. Reg’lar 
party.” 

“You mean Sheriff Jenney will come to this hotel 
—officially—and find Mr. Pell and myself in this 
room?” 

“That’s the ticket.” 

“Why—why—he’d have to let us go.” 

“Sooner or later,” said Peewee. “Fust he’d take 
you to the jail and lock you up—disorderly persons 
or some sich charge. Drinkin’ and carousin’ in my 
hotel! . . . Course he’ll have to let you go—some¬ 
time. Maybe after the jedge gives you thirty days 
in the calaboose.” 

“Um! ... I think I comprehend,” said Evan, 
slowly. “I— In fact, I am sure I comprehend. . . . 
Sheriff Jenney did not originate this plan, I am sure. 

270 


CONTRABAND 

. . . Nor yourself. It required a certain modicum 
of intelligence.” 

“ ’Tain’t no matter who thought it up—it’s 
thought,” said Peewee, “and when the town of 
Gibeon comes to know all the facts—why, I don’t 
figger you two ’ll be in a position to do nobody much 
harm. . . . Folks hain’t apt to believe you like you 
was the Bible. Kind of hidebound, them Gibeon 
people. Sh’u’dn’t be s’prised if they give you a ride 
out of town on a rail.” 

“Nobody would believe it. We would tell every¬ 
one how we came to be here.” This from Carmel. 

“We’re willin’ to take that chance,” grinned Pee¬ 
wee. “Seems like a certain party’s got a grudge 
ag’in’ you, miss, and he alius pays off his grudges.” 

“As he paid off Sheriff Churchill,” said Carmel. 

“Killin’,” said Peewee, sententiously, “is quick. 
This here ’ll last you a lifetime. You’ll alius be 
knowed as the gal that was arrested with a man in 
the Lakeside Hotel. . . .” 

He turned on his heel and walked to the door; 
there he paused to grin at them maliciously before he 
disappeared, locking the door after him with elabo¬ 
rate care. 

“They—nobody would believe,” said Carmel. 

“I am afraid, indeed, I may say I am certain, 
everybody would believe,” said Evan. “I have seen 
the reactions of Gibeon to affairs of this sort. Gibeon 
loves to believe the worst.” 

“Then-” 

“We would have to go away,” said Evan, gravely. 

271 



CONTRABAND 


“But—but the story would follow us.” 

“Such stories always follow.” 

Carmel studied his face. It was Evan Pell’s face, 
but for the first time she saw how different it was 
from the pedant’s face, the schoolmaster’s face, he 
had worn when first she met him. The spectacles 
were gone; the dissatisfied, supercilious expression 
was gone, and, in its place, she perceived something 
stronger, infinitely more desirable. She saw strength, 
courage, sympathy, understanding. She saw what 
gave her hope even in this, her blackest hour. If 
the worst came to the worst she had found a man 
upon whom to rely, a man who would stand by her 
to the end and uphold her and protect her and love 
her. 

Yet—she closed her eyes to shut out the imagined 
scenes—to be branded as a woman who could accom¬ 
pany a man to such a resort as the Lakeside, and to 
remain with him there for days and nights—carous¬ 
ing ! . . . She knew how she regarded women who 
were guilty of such sordid affairs. Other women 
would look at her as she looked at them, would draw 
away their skirts when she passed, would peer at her 
with hard, hostile, sneering eyes. . . . That would be 
her life thenceforward—the life of an outcast, of a 
woman detected in sin. ... It would be horrible, 
unspeakably horrible—unbearable. She had valued 
herself so highly, had, without giving it conscious 
thought, felt herself to be so removed from such 
affairs as quite to dwell upon a planet where they 
could not exist. She had been proud without knowing 

272 


CONTRABAND 


she was proud. ... It had not been so much a sensa¬ 
tion of purity, a consciousness of purity, as a sure¬ 
ness in herself, a certainty that evil could not ap¬ 
proach her. . . . And now. . . . 

“Evan—Evan—I am frightened,” she said. 

“If only you had not come,” he answered. 

“But I am here—I am glad I am here—with you.” 

He stretched out his hand toward her and she laid 
her hand in the clasp of his fingers. 

“We have until to-morrow night,” he said. 
“Twenty-four hours.” 

“But-” 

“Empires have fallen in twenty-four hours.” 

“Maybe—some one will come to look for us.” 

He shook his head. “They will have taken care of 
that.” 

“Then you—think there is no chance.” 

“I- Carmel dear, the chance is slight. I must 

admit the chance is slight. But with twenty-four 

hours. ... If-” His eyes traveled about the 

skimpily furnished room, searching for something, 
searching for it vainly. “If I could walk,” he said. 
“I’m—almost helpless.” 

She went to him, trembling, the horror of the 
future eating into her as if it were an acid-coated 
mantle. “I—I won’t be able to live,” she said. 

He did not answer, for his eyes were fixed on the 
door which led, not into the hall, but into an adjoin¬ 
ing bedroom. They rested upon its white doorknob 
as if hypnotized. 

“Will you help me to that door?” he asked. “I’ll 

273 





CONTRABAND 

push the chair along. You—can you keep me from 
falling?” 

Slowly, not without twinges of hot pain in his 
injured ankle, they reached the door. Evan felt in 
his pocket for his penknife, and with it set about 
loosening the screw which held the knob in place. 
Twice he broke the blade of his knife, but at last he 
managed the thing. The white doorknob rested in 
his hand. 

“There,” he said, “that is something.” 

“What? ... I don’t understand.” 

He sat in the chair, removed the shoe from his 
sound foot and then the sock. He did this slowly, 
methodically, and as methodically replaced the shoe 
on his sockless foot. Then he lifted from the floor 
the stocking and dropped into it the doorknob. It 
fitted snugly into the toe. 

“Er—I have read of such things,” he said. He 
grasped the sock by the top and whirled it about his 
head. “Mechanics,” said he, “teach us that a blow 
delivered with such an implement is many times more 
efficacious than a blow delivered with the—er—solid 
object held directly in the hand. . . .” 


CHAPTER XXV 


HAVE come to the conclusion,” said Evan 
A Pell, “that every man, no matter what his voca¬ 
tion, should be a man of action. That is to say, 
he should devote some attention and practice to 
those muscular and mental activities which will 
serve him should some unexpected emergency arise.” 

“Yes,” said Carmel. . . . “Yes.” 

“I find myself with little or no equipment for 
strenuous adventure. This, we must admit, proves 
itself to be a serious oversight.” 

“Do you know how long we have been shut in 
this room?” Carmel demanded. 

“I do. You were—er—propelled into this place 
at approximately ten-thirty last night. It is now 
five o’clock to-day. Eighteen hours and a half.” 

“Nothing has happened—nothing! . . . We’ve 
been fed like animals in a zoo. ... I dozed fitfully 
during the night. We’ve talked and talked, and 
waited—waited. . . . This waiting! Evan, I—it’s 
the waiting which is so terrible.” 

“There are,” said Evan, with self-accusation in 
his voice, “men who would escape from this place. 
They would do it with seeming ease. Undoubtedly 
there is a certain technique, but I do not possess it. 
I—er—on an occasion I attended a showing of 

275 


CONTRABAND 


motion pictures. There was an individual who— 
without the least apparent difficulty, accomplished 
things to which escape from this room would be 
mere child’s play.” 

‘To-night,” said Carmel, “the sheriff will come 
to this hotel, and find us here.” 

“What must you think of me?” Evan said, des¬ 
perately. He turned in his chair and stared through 
the window toward the woods which surrounded 
the hotel upon three sides, his shoulders drooping 
with humiliation. Carmel was at his side in an in¬ 
stant, her hands upon his shoulders. 

“Evan! . . . Evan! You must not accuse your¬ 
self. No man could do anything. You have done 
all—more than all—any man could do. . . . We— 
whatever comes, we shall face it together. . . . I— 
I shall always be proud of you.” 

“I—I want you to be proud of me. I—the man 
will be here with our food in half an hour. . . . 
Would you mind standing at some distance?” 

She withdrew, puzzled. Evan drew from his 
pocket the stocking with the doorknob in its toe 
and studied it severely. “This,” said he, “is our 
sole reliance. It has a most unpromising look. I 
have never seen an implement less calculated to 
arouse hope.” 

He edged his chair closer to the bed, grasped the 
top of the sock, and scowled at a spot on the cover¬ 
lid. He shook his head, reached for his handker¬ 
chief, and, folding it neatly, laid it upon the spot 
at which he had scowled. 


276 


CONTRABAND 


“A—er—target,” he explained. 

Then, drawing back his arip, he brought down 
the improvised slung-shot with a thud upon the bed. 

“Did I hit it?” he asked. 

“I—I don’t think so.” 

“I knew it. . . . It is an art requiring practice.” 

Again and again he belabored the bed with his 
weapon, asking after each blow if he had struck 
the mark. “I fancy,” he said, “I am becoming more 
accomplished. I—er—am pretending it is a human 
head. I am endeavoring to visualize it as the head 
of an individual obnoxious to me.” 

“But why? What are you about?” 

“I have heard it said that desperate situations 
demand desperate remedies. I am about to become 
desperate. Do I look desperate?” He turned to 
her hopefully. 

“I—you look very determined.” 

“It is, perhaps, the same thing. I am very deter¬ 
mined. I am inexorable. . . . Please listen at the 
door. If he comes upon us before I have time to 
make essential preparations, my desperation will be 
of no avail.” 

Carmel went to the door and listened while Evan 
continued to belabor the bed. “Decidedly,” he 
panted, “I am becoming proficient. I hit it ten 
times hand-running.” 

“But-” 

“Please, listen. ... You see how impossible it 
is for me to escape. I am unable to walk, much 
less to make satisfactory speed. . . . You, however, 

277 



CONTRABAND 


are intact. Also, if one of us is found to be absent, 
this unspeakable plan must fail. I am working 
upon a plan—a desperate plan—to make possible the 
absence of one of us—namely, yourself.” 

“Silly! ... Do you think I would leave you here 
—for them to—to do what they wanted to?” 

“If you escape they will dare do nothing to me. 
That is clear. Undoubtedly they will be chagrined, 
and at least one of their number will be—in a posi¬ 
tion to require medical attention. I trust this will 
be so. I should like to feel I have injured some¬ 
body. A latent savagery is coming to the surface 
in me.” 

“But what are you going to do?” 

“I think I had best assume the position necessary 
to my plan,” he said. “Would you mind helping 
me to the door?” 

He hitched his chair along until it stood close to 
the wall at the side of the door opposite from its 
hinges. Evan flattened himself against the wall 
where it would be impossible for one entering the 
door to see him until well within the room. 

“There,” he said. “You, also, have your part.” 

“What—what must I do?” 

“He will be carrying a tray of dishes. If—events 
should so shape themselves that he should drop this, 
a tremendous and alarming crash would result. It 
would spell disaster. You, therefore, will be at the 
door when the man opens it, and will reach for the 
tray. Be sure you have it grasped firmly—and on 
no account—it matters not how startled you may be 

278 


CONTRABAND 


at what follows—are you to drop it. Everything 
depends upon that.” 

“And then-” 

“A great deal depends upon yourself. The unex¬ 
pectedness of our attempt will militate in our favor. 
Should matters eventuate as I expect, you will be 
able to leave this room. From that instant I can¬ 
not help you. . . . But, an attempt on our part 
not being expected, I rather imagine you will be 
able to make your way downstairs and out of doors. 
. . . It is only a chance, of course. It may fail, in 
which event we will be no worse off than we are 
at present. ... You will then hasten to Gibeon 
and take such measures as you conceive to be 
adequate.” 

“I shan’t leave you. ... I shan’t, I shan’t, I 
shan’t.” 

His lips compressed and an expression appeared 
upon his face which she had never seen there be¬ 
fore. It was masterful, an expression of conscious 
force. It was the real man peering through its dis¬ 
guise. His hand clenched into a fist. 

“By Heavens!” he said, “you’ll do as you’re told.” 

“Evan!” 

“Precisely,” he said. “Now make ready.” 

They waited, wordless. It was five minutes per¬ 
haps before heavy feet ascended the stairs, and they 
heard the rattle of dishes as the man set down his 
tray to unlock the door. He thrust it open with 
his foot, picked up the tray and stepped through the 
opening. Carmel stood before him. She stretched 

279 



CONTRABAND 


out her hands for the tray and grasped it. . . . As 
she did so, Evan Pell, standing poised over his 
chair, swung forward his homely weapon. . . . His 
practice had made for efficiency. The doorknob 
thudded sickeningly upon the man’s bald head; he 
stood swaying an instant, then his knees declined 
further to sustain his weight, and he folded up into 
a limp heap on the floor. 

“Pull him inside and shut the door,” Evan 
snapped. “I—er—find in myself a certain adapta¬ 
bility. . . . Put on your wrap and hat. Hurry. 

. . . The front way. Keep out of sight. Can you 
drive a car?” 

“Yes.” 

“If one is standing in front—steal it.” 

“Yes.” 

“Now—go.” 

“I— Oh, Evan.” 

She was in his arms, and her lips to his. “I— If 
they kill you I shall die, too.” 

He opened the door and stared into the dimly 
lighted hall. “It is clear. Go.” 

“Good-by.” 

“Go. You’re wasting time.” He pushed her 
through the door. “Our best hope is that they— 
to my surprise—have underestimated me. . . . 
Good-by. . . . I—er—seem to have underestimated 
myself. ... I seem to have been—exceptionally in¬ 
efficient in a field quite foreign to my previous ac¬ 
tivities. Hasten.” 

He shut the door and Carmel stood alone, de- 

280 


CONTRABAND 


pendent upon herself, without other hope or reliance 
than in her own expedients. She moved softly down 
the hall, reached the top of the stairs which led 
downward to another hall and the front door. She 
listened. There was no alarming sound. . . . She 
descended halfway and stopped again. The lower 
hall, apparently, was in the middle of the house. To 
the left was the room which had been the bar in the 
days when liquor might be sold openly; at the right 
was the dining room. The door to the dining room 
was closed; that into the bar stood open—and there 
was her danger. She must pass that door without 
being seen. Once outside, the danger decreased al¬ 
most to a minimum. Could she reach the shelter of 
the woods, she felt she would be safe. 

She crept downward; reached the ground floor and 
flattened herself against the wall. What if the front 
door should open and somebody should enter? . . . 
She hesitated, then peered cautiously through the 
door and into the bar. . . . As she did so she heard 
an automobile drive up in front and stop. ... In 
the bar she saw Peewee Bangs sitting, his feet on a 
table, reading a newspaper. 

Feet ascended the steps outside, and she cowered. 
A hand rattled the knob, and she heard Bangs drop 
his feet to the floor, with the scrape of his chair 
as he turned. . . . The door opened. Something, 
not conscious volition, moved Carmel. As the door 
opened and a man stepped in, she sprang forward, 
brushed past him, and ran down the steps. Behind 
her she heard a shout—the squeaky voice of Peewee 
19 281 


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Bangs. . . . Before her stood a Ford, its engine 
agitating the whole car, and she ran toward it and 
threw herself into the seat. In an instant she had 
grasped the wheel and adjusted her foot to the 
clutch. . . . Then she was conscious of a jar, and 
out of the corner of her eye saw Bangs’s face, dis¬ 
torted with rage, saw his hand reaching for her arm. 
. . . She screamed. Then her hand, chance led, fell 
upon the seat, encountered a heavy wrench. . . . She 
lifted it, dashed it with all her strength into that 
inhuman face. ... It vanished. . . . The next 
thing of which she became clearly conscious was of 
speed, of a rocking, bounding car. . . . She was 
free, had escaped her pursuer, and was rushing with 
every ounce of power the little car possessed toward 
Gibeon. . . . 

Was there a car to follow her? A larger, more 
powerful, faster car? . . . She did not know. She 
glanced behind. There was nothing yet, no pursuing 
headlight. Carmel gripped the wheel and threw down 
the gas lever to its final notch. . . . Around corners, 
through puddles, over patches rutted by heavy 
wheels, she forced the little car. It rocked, skidded, 
threatened, but always righted itself and kept on its 
way. . . . She looked behind again. . . . Head¬ 
lights ! ... By this time she must be half a mile or 
more from the hotel. It would be a good car which 
could make up that lead in the short distance to 
Gibeon. . . . Yet, as she looked back from time to 
time, the headlights drew closer and closer. . . . She 
could see straggling lights now—the fringe of the 

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village. . . . Would they dare follow her into the 
town itself ? She fancied not. . . . The bridge lay 
before her—and the pursuing car roared not a hun¬ 
dred yards behind. She swept across the river and 
sped down Main Street at a rate never witnessed 
before by that drowsy thoroughfare. . . . She was 
safe. . . . Before her was the Town Hall—lighted 
brightly. . . . She looked back. The pursuing car 
was not to be seen. 

The town meeting! The citizens of Gibeon were 
there upon the town’s business. She brought the car 
to a stop before the door, leaped out, and ran up the 
stairs. The hall was crowded. On the platform 
stood the chairman of the town board. . . . Carmel 
was conscious of no embarrassment, only of the need 
for haste, of the necessity for finding help. She 
entered the room and made her way up the aisle to 
the platform. Without hesitating she mounted the 
steps, unconscious of the craning of necks, the whis¬ 
perings, the curiosity her arrival was causing. 

The chairman halted in his remarks. Carmel, in 
her excitement, ignored him, almost shouldered him 
aside. 

“Men—men of Gibeon,” she said, “crime is being 
committed, perhaps murder is being done, at this 
minute. . . . What are you going to do ?” 


CHAPTER XXVI 


T HE hall was still. It was as if, by some necro¬ 
mancy of words, Carmel had turned to stone the 
town meeting of Gibeon. She looked down into faces 
which seemed to her white and strained. The faces 
waited. She had caught them by her words; gripped 
them. Something was about to happen. Every man 
in the room felt the imminence of grave events. The 
very air tingled with it as if waves of some vital 
force agitated the air and discharged themselves with 
such force as to be felt by physical touch. ... It 
was Carmel Lee’s first public appearance, yet she was 
not frightened. Rather she was eager; words jostled 
with one another for the privilege of being uttered 
first. She paused, staring down into those faces. 

“Men of Gibeon,” she said, and her little fist, 
clenched with knuckles showing white, lifted from 
her side and extended itself toward them, “Men of 
Gibeon, I have found the body of Sheriff Churchill. 
. . . He was murdered! . . .” 

The faces seemed to move in unison as if they 
were painted upon a single canvas and the canvas had 
been suddenly jerked by an unseen hand. They be¬ 
came audible by an intake of the breath. 

“I found him,” Carmel said, “close by the Lake¬ 
side Hotel. . . . Since yesterday I have been a pris- 

284 


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oner in the Lakeside Hotel, I and Evan Pell. ... I 
went to find him. I found Sheriff Churchill; I saw 
five great trucks unload in the hotel yard, and those 
trucks were carrying whisky from the other side of 
the border. ... It was whisky, men of Gibeon, 
which killed Sheriff Churchill. It was the men who 
are trafficking in liquor who murdered him. ... I 
know their names. I have seen them and been their 
prisoner. ... At this moment Evan Pell, locked in 
a room of that unspeakable place, is in danger of his 
life. He is injured, cannot escape nor defend him¬ 
self. Yet he made it possible for me to escape and 
to come to you for help. ...” Again she paused. 

“I could not go to the law because the law does 
not belong to the people of Gibeon. It has been 
bought and paid for. It is owned by criminals and 
by murderers. . . . We have a new sheriff. . . . 
That man’s hands are red with the blood of the man 
whose place he fills. ... So I have come to you, 
for there is no other law in Gibeon to-night than 
yourselves.” 

There had been no movement, no sound, only 
that tense, fateful silence. 

“Will you permit this thing? Will you continue 
to allow your town and your county to rest under 
this dreadful thing? You can stop it to-night. You 
can wipe it out forever. . . . Let me tell you what 
I know.” 

She spoke rapidly, eloquently. In that moment she 
was no longer a young woman, but a leader, a 
prophet, one sent to deliver a message, and she de- 

285 


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livered it fittingly. Her words descended upon those 
upturned faces, compelling belief. There could be 
no doubt. . . . She described the plot against herself 
as Bangs had recited it tauntingly—how she was to 
have been made a thing to scorn and to turn aside 
from; how that part of her which was more valuable 
to her than life itself was to have been murdered. 
At the recital the faces moved again, became audible 
.again in a murmur which held kinship with a snarl. 
. . . Gibeon was awakening. 

Point by point, fact by fact, she drove home to 
them the conditions among which they had been liv¬ 
ing, but one name she withheld until the moment 
should come for its utterance. . . . She described 
the activities of the whisky smugglers, the workings 
of their organization, its power—the intelligence 
which directed it. 

“Will you endure this, men of Gibeon? . . . No 
time may be lost. At this instant a man stands under 
the shadow of death! What are you going to do? 
Will you let him die?” 

In the hall a man arose. “What is the name of this 
man—the man who is to blame for all this?” he 
demanded. 

“His name,” said Carmel, “is Abner Fownes!” 

It was as if they had expected it; there was no 
demonstration, no confusion. The men of Gibeon 
were strangely unmoved, strangely silent, strangely 
stern. It was as if they were moved by a common 
impulse, a common determination. They were not 
many individuals, but a single entity. . . . They had 

286 


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been molded into solidity—and that solidity was 
Gibeon. 

The faces were faces no longer, but human beings, 
men standing erect as if waiting for a signal. . . . 
Among them Carmel saw Jared Whitefield. His eyes 
encounted hers, and he nodded. . . . 

“Will you come with me?” she cried. “Will 
you follow me? . . . Those who will follow— 
come! . . 

She descended from the platform and a lane opened 
before her; she reached the door and turned. . . . 
The men of Gibeon were behind her, and as if they 
were a company marching behind its commander 
they followed her down the stairs. There was no 
shouting, no confusion, no unsightly mob spirit. . . . 
Along the street stood waiting cars, the cars of the 
farmers of the town, and men crowded into them 
beyond their capacity. ... It was a crusade, the 
crusade of Gibeon, and Carmel had preached it. 

They started quietly, grimly, an orderly procession. 
It moved through the streets, across the bridge, and 
out the road toward the Lakeside Hotel. ... A 
hundred men bent upon purging their community of a 
thing which had debauched it. . . . On and on, ur¬ 
gent, inexorable, moved the line of cars. . . . Then 
a sudden stop. The road was barricaded, and men 
with rifles stood behind to block the way. 

“What’s this here?” bellowed a voice out of the 
darkness. “What kind of goin’s on is this here?” 
It was Sheriff Jenney. 

There was no answer. “I order ye to disperse and 

287 


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git to your homes quietly,” he said. “We hain’t 
goin’ to have no mobbin’ in Gibeon.” 

The cars emptied and men crowded forward. 
“Out of the way, Jenney,” a voice commanded. 
“We’re in no humor to be meddled with to-night.” 

“Don’t go resistin’ an officer,” Jenney roared. 
“Disperse like I told ye.” 

Then Jared Whitefield forced his way to the front, 
and on either side of him were strangers to Gibeon. 
They leaped the barricade before Jenney, taken by 
surprise, could move his hand. Whitefield dropped 
a heavy hand on Jenney’s shoulder. 

“Jenney,” he said, “drop that gun. You’re under 
arrest.” 

“Arrest! . . . Me? Who kin arrest the sheriff 
of a county.” He laughed loudly. 

“I can,” said Whitefield. “Drop that gun.” 

Jenney twisted in Whitefield’s grip, but the huge 
man held him as in a vise. 

“You’ve gone ag’in’ somethin’ bigger than a town¬ 
ship or a county, Jenney, or even a state. ... It’s 
the United States of America that’s puttin’ ydu under 
arrest, Jenney, through me, its duly appointed mar¬ 
shal. . . . Drop that gun!” 

The United States of America! The Federal au¬ 
thorities had taken a hand. That explained White- 
field’s absence. . . . The United States! . . . Car¬ 
mel sobbed. In this thing she had the might of 
America behind her! The authority of a nation! 

“Put him in a car,” Whitefield directed his com¬ 
panions ; and it was done. 

288 


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“Whitefield,” called a voice, “you hain’t goin’ to 
interfere? You hain’t goin’ to stop us?” 

“I got nothin’ to do with you,” Whitefield said. 
“I got what I come for.” 

The cars filled again, the obstruction was removed, 
and once again the men of Gibeon moved toward 
their objective. They reached it, surrounded it, 
men burst in its doors and laid hands upon whom¬ 
ever they found. . . . Carmel, well escorted, ran up 
the stairs. 

“That’s the door,” she cried, and powerful shoul¬ 
ders thrust it from its hinges. 

“Evan! . . .” she cried. “Evan! . . .” 

He lay upon the floor, motionless. Carmel knelt 
beside him, frantic at the sight of his motionlessness. 
She lifted his head to her lap, peered into his white 
face, stared at his closed eyes. 

“They’ve killed him,” she said, in a dull, dead 
voice. “We’ve come too late.” 

Mr. Hopper, of the Gibeon bank, thrust his 
hand inside Evan’s shirt to feel for the beating of 
his heart. ... It was distinguishable, faint but 
distinguishable. 

“He’s not dead,” said Hopper, “but somebody’s 
beat hell out of him.” 

They lifted him gently and carried him down the 
stairs. Carmel Walked by his side, silent, stunned. 
. . . He was not dead, but he was horribly injured. 
He would die. . . . She knew she would never 
again see his eyes looking into hers. They placed 
him in a car, and she sat, supporting his weight, 

289 


CONTRABAND 

her arm about him, his head heavy upon her 
breast. . . . 

“Everybody out?” roared a voice. 

“Everybody’s out!” 

Carmel saw a light appear inside the hotel, a light 
cast by no lamp or lantern. ... It increased, leaped, 
flamed. Room after room was touched by the illum¬ 
ination. It climbed the stairs, roared outward 
through windows, spreading, crackling, Hissing, de¬ 
vouring. ... In a dozen minutes the Lakeside Hotel 
was wrapped in flame—a beacon light in Gibeon’s 
history. High and higher mounted the flames until 
the countryside for miles about was lighted by it, 
notified by it that a thing was happening, that Gibeon 
was being purified by fire. 

“Is there no doctor here ?” Carmel cried. 

“Doc Stewart’s some’eres. . . . I’ll git him.” 

The doctor was found and came. He examined 
Evan as best he could. . “Better get him to town. 
Can’t tell much now. . . . Depends on whether 
there’s concussion. . . . I’ll go along with you.” 

“Before you go, Miss Lee—where—is the sheriff? 
Sheriff Churchill?” 

“Follow the shore—that way. You’ll find him—on 
the edge.” 

“We got Peewee Bangs—he was hidin’ in a boat¬ 
house.” 

“I—I’m glad,” said Carmel. 

The car moved away, bearing Carmel, Evan, and 
the doctor. Somehow it seemed like the end of the 
world to her—a definite stopping place of things. 

290 


CONTRABAND 


The lurid flames making a ghastly forest, black fig¬ 
ures flitting about from shadow to shadow, the con¬ 
fusion of her thoughts, the piling up for days of 
event upon event and emotion upon emotion—all 
this seemed to be a climax—a finality. There was 
an unreality about it all, an unnatural crowding of 
events, a hustling and jostling, as if she were in an 
overwrought throng of occurrences, adventures, 
events, crises which pushed and shoved and harried 
her, striving ever to thrust her out of their way that 
they might march unimpeded. There rested upon 
her now a curious listlessness, a lifelessness, as if 
they had succeeded, as if they had elbowed her off 
the road of life, upon which she could never regain 
a footing. 

Gibeon was aroused; Gibeon was crusading! The 
thought awakened no thrill. She was safe; never 
again would she be threatened by the forces which 
she had challenged. She was free to pursue her 
way—but the knowledge came as dead knowledge. 
She did not care. She cared for nothing—because 
she knew, she was positive, Evan Pell had gone from 
her forever. . . . 

The car stopped before the doctor’s house and 
Evan was carried up to a bedroom, unconscious still. 
. . . Doctor Stewart tried to exclude her from the 
room, but she would not be excluded. This was all 
she had left; all life held for her—that faint, irregu¬ 
lar beating of Evan Pell’s heart. . . . She knew 
those heartbeats were her own, would be her own so 
long as they persisted. . . . She would remain 

291 


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would sit by him watching, watching, waiting. This 
scarcely perceptible life was all she would ever have 
of him, and she dared lose no instant of it. 

Doctor Stewart worked over the bed. Carmel 
thought him calm, terribly indifferent, businesslike. 
He was a tradesman working at a trade when she 
would have had him a god performing a miracle. . . . 
After a time he turned to her. 

“I cannot tell,” he said. “Some concussion is 
present. There seems to be no fracture of the skull. 
. . . Wh^t internal injuries he may have suffered— 
it is impossible to say. ... In the morning. . . .” 

“He will be dead,” said Carmel. 

The doctor shook his head. “I do not think so. 
I hope—in such cases one cannot be sure—but-” 

“He will be dead,” said Carmel. 

“It is in God’s hand,” said the doctor. 

“They have killed him—because he was brave, be¬ 
cause he loved me—because- Oh, Doctor, that is 

the awful thought—he is dead for me. He gave his 
life for me.” 

His hand rested upon her shoulder with the gentle 
touch which some men learn by a life of service— 
and Doctor Stewart, country physician, unrecog¬ 
nized, unsung, had lived such a life. “My dear,” 
he said, “how better could a man die ?” • 

“He killed him—Abner Fownes killed him.” 

“Abner Fownes has run his course,” said the 
doctor. 

“It is not enough—not enough. The law can do 
nothing to him which will make him pay.” 

292 






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“The punishment of the law,” said the doctor, “is 
a puny thing beside the punishment of God.” 

Carmel stood up; she bent over the bed and kissed 
Evan upon the cold lips. . . . Something possessed 
her, controlled her, a power stronger than herself, 
an impulse more urgent than she had ever known. 
It moved her as if she were an automaton, a puppet 
ordered and regulated by strings in the hands of its 
fabricator. She moved toward the door. 

“Where are you going?” asked the doctor. 

“I have a thing to do,” she said. 

He peered into her face and saw there that which 
shocked him, startled him. He would have stayed 

her. “Wait-” he commanded. She eluded his 

outstretched hand and hurried down the stairs. There 
was no indecision in her step or in her manner. There 
was no indecision in her soul. She knew where she 
was going, and why she was going. . . . She was on 
her way to find Abner Fownes! 



CHAPTER XXVII 


3NER FOWNES was sitting in his library wait- 



** ^ ing for word from Sheriff Jenney. If mat¬ 
ters went to-night as he felt certain they must go, he 
could live again in security, untroubled by conscience, 
with no apprehensions, and with his financial worries 
removed. Five truckloads of liquor had been dis¬ 
charged at the Lakeside Hotel. He knew that. The 
importation had been successful, without a hitch. 
Within a week the whisky would be distributed and 
the cash in hand. ... It would be sufficient to clear 
his most troublesome obligations and to put him on 
his feet again. He considered this with a glow of 
satisfaction. . . . 

Carmel Lee had constituted a threat, but she was 
powerless to threaten now. At any moment word 
would arrive that she was in Jenney’s hands, her 
reputation in Gibeon would be destroyed, and she 
would be powerless. Public opinion would drive 
her from the place. 

Abner sat back comfortably in his chair and looked 
forward to a life of quiet and importance. He would 
continue to live in security as Gibeon’s first citizen. 
He might even seek political preferment. In a year 
there would be a senatorial election. Why should he 
not stand for the position. To be Senator from his 


294 


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state that was something, indeed. And why not ? 
His reflections carried him to Washington. He saw 
himself in the Senate Chamber, listened to his voice 
rolling forth sonorous periods, heard with infinite 
satisfaction the applause of his fellow Senators. . . . 

The telephone rang and he was guilty of unseemly 
haste to reach the instrument. 

“Hello! . . . Hello! . . . Who is it? Is it 
Jenney?” 

“No,” said a voice, “it’s Deputy Jackson. . . . 
Look out for yourself. . . . There’s hell-” 

“What’s that?” 

“The whole town meetin’s rushin’ off to Peewee’s 
place. Reg’lar mob. . . . Jenney he set out to stop 
’em, but he’s arrested.” 

“Jenney .arrested!” 

“Federal authorities. Him and two others is 
pinched. Better look out for yourself. I’mgoin’to.” 

The receiver banged on its hook at the other end 
of the line. He was alone. Washington vanished, 
glowing dreams of the future gave place to the grim 
reality of the present. The Federal authorities! . . . 
He had considered them negligible. Somehow one 
lost sight of the Federal government in that remote 
region; they were unfamiliar; it seemed a spot to 
which their writ did not run. 

He tried to consider the fact coolly and calmly, but 
his brain refused to function in such a manner. He 
was confused; the suddenness, the unexpectedness of 
the blow from such a source shook him from his 
foundations. What did it mean? How had it come 

295 



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about. ... Clearly, if Jenney was under arrest, he 
could not complete his raid on the Lakeside Hotel 
and so abolish Carmel Lee. . . . That was that. . . . 
But how did it affect him? How did it affect the 
thousands of dollars’ worth of liquor so necessary to 
his financial rehabilitation ? . . . 

The big question—was he threatened personally? 
—was one he could not answer. There had been no 
sign of threat. Jenney was arrested. Perhaps they 
did not mean to arrest him, had no evidence against 
him. . . . But could Jenney be depended upon to 
keep his mouth shut? . . . Jenney, he confessed to 
himself, did not seem a man capable of great loyalty, 
nor possessed of high courage. He would weaken. 
Under pressure he would tell all he knew. . . . The 
advice of the voice over the telephone was good. He 
would look out for himself. . . 

He rushed up the stairs to make ready for flight. 
It would be a good idea to absent himself, no matter 
what happened. If worst came to worst—why, he 
would be out of reach of the law. If matters turned 
out otherwise it would be easy to return from a 
hurried business trip. . . . He began packing fran¬ 
tically. Having packed, he went to the safe in his 
library and transferred sufficient funds to his pocket- 
book. Then, as a precautionary measure, he care¬ 
fully destroyed certain private papers. . . . This 
consumed time. 

The telephone rang again, and Abner answered in 
no little trepidation. 

“Mr. Fownes?” asked a voice. 

296 


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“Yes. Who is it?” 

“Tucker. . . . Say, the mob’s burned Lakeside 
Hotel. They’ve got Peewee. . . . Burned her up 
slick and clean—and everythin’ in it. The whole 
shipment’s gone. ...” 

Fownes dropped the receiver and sank nerveless 
into a chair. At any rate, he was ruined. That much 
was certain. Nothing remained to fight for now but 
his personal security, his liberty. He snatched up 
his bag and moved toward the door. . . . His plan 
was not clear—only the first step of it. He would 
rent an automobile and drive out of town with what 
speed was possible. ... As he reached the door he 
realized with a sudden sharp pang that he was leav¬ 
ing his house for good, leaving Gibeon forever. 
He, Abner Fownes, first citizen, man of substance, 
was fleeing from his native place like the commonest 
criminal. 

Dazedly he wondered how it had come about. . . . 
somehow, he felt, that girl was at the bottom of the 
thing. His misfortunes were due to her meddling. 
He wished 'he could get his fingers upon her throat. 

He descended the steps and walked toward the 
street. The night was dark, dark enough to conceal 
his movements, perhaps to avert recognition. . . . 
A certain confidence came to him. He would get 
away; he would possess liberty and his intelligence 
which had served him so well. . . . There were other 
places—and he was not old. Perhaps. . . . 

As he turned out upon the street a figure confronted 
him. He halted, drew back. 

20 297 


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“Abner Fownes,” said a voice, “where are you 
going?” 

“You! . . . You! . . he said, hoarsely. His 
fingers twitched, fury burned in his heart, and the 
desire to slay. He looked about him. All was black¬ 
ness. . . . Here she was, this girl who was sending 
him crashing down in ruin. . . . 

“He is dead,” said Carmel. “You are a murderer 
again. Abner Fownes. . . . You’re running away.” 

“Out of my way, you—you-” 

“You’ve killed him,” she said. “You must be 
punished for that. ... You must not go away. You 
must wait until they come.” 

“You—you’ve done this—you-” He was 

working himself into a rage. He was not the man 
to do a violence in cold blood. 

“I have done it. . . . But to what good? He is 
dead—is dying. . . . Nothing can pay for that. He 
will go away from me forever. . . . Abner Fownes, 
you are a murderer, and you must pay for it. . . . 
Oh, if I could make you pay a thousand, thousand 
times. . . . And you shall pay!” 

He dropped his bag and reached for her throat 
with clutching fingers. She stepped back, avoiding 
him. 

“They are coming now,” she said. “See. . . . 
There are their lights. . . . Wait, Abner Fownes. 
You cannot get away. If you try to go I shall hold 
you.” 

He turned. Up the road approached a multitude 
of automobile lights. Gibeon was returning from 

298 




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its crusade! . . . He uttered a shrill, unnatural cry 
and made as if to rush past her, but Carmel grasped 
his arm. “Wait,” she said. 

He waited. A feeling of powerlessness swept over 
him. A sense of impotence and defeat and despair. 
. . . He could not force himself to raise his hand 
against this girl. He was afraid. He was afraid 
of her. 

She remained standing in the middle of the walk, 
blocking his way, but it was unnecessary to block his 
way. He could not have moved. ... A cold, cling¬ 
ing dread was upon him. He was afraid of the 
night, of the darkness. He dared not be alone with 
the night. ... If Carmel had gone Abner Fownes 
would have followed her, would have called her back, 
begged her to stay with him. . . . 

The lights of the first car rested upon them, illu¬ 
minating the spot. . . . Carmel stepped forward and 
signaled. The car stopped, halting the procession. 
. . . Men got down and surrounded him. . . . 

“Where,” said Carmel, “is Sheriff Churchill?” 

“There,” said a man. 

“Carry him here,” she ordered, and it was done. 

Wrapped in blankets, the thing that had been Sher¬ 
iff Churchill was laid on the sidewalk at Abner 
Fownes’s feet. 

“Uncover his face. Let this man look at him,” 
Carmel said. “Make him look. . . . Make him 
look. . . .” 

Fownes covered his face, staggered back. “No. 
. . . No. . . . Take—take it away.” 

299 


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“Uncover his face,” said Carmel. “Take this man’s 
hands from his eyes. . . . Make him look. . . .” 

They obeyed. Fownes stood quivering, eyes 
tightly shut. 

“Look,” said Carmel. “Look!” 

She overmastered him. He opened his eyes and 
looked at the dreadful sight. He stared, bent for¬ 
ward. His hands stretched out, clawlike, as he stared 
at the horror. Then he threw back his head and 
laughed, and the laughter ended in a shriek. . . . 
He swayed, half turned, and fell back into the arms 
of the men of Gibeon. . . . 

Jared Whitefield forced his way to Fownes’s side. 
“I will take charge of him,” he said. “Will some 
one take care of this girl. . . . She hain’t herself. 
. . . Take her back to Doc Stewart’s. ...” 

Morning penetrated the room where Carmel sat, 
entering gently, gently pushing back the night. Car¬ 
mel sat wide-eyed, waiting, waiting. She had not 
slept, had not closed her eyes. From time to time she 
had climbed the stairs to look upon Evan Pell’s face, 
to be told that he lived, that his condition was un¬ 
changed. . . . She was worn, weary. Nothing mat¬ 
tered now. She was at the end of things, wishing 
for death. 

Doctor Stewart came to the door. 

“Can you step upstairs, Miss Lee ?” 

“Is—is he-” 

The doctor shook his head. 

Carmel followed. Doubtless he was sinking, and 

300 



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she was summoned to be present at the end. . . . 
She entered the room. Her heart was cold, heavy, 
dead. As she approached the beside she could not lift 
her eyes to Evan’s face. 

“Carmel—dear. . . said a voice. 

Her heart came to life; it warmed, leaped in her 
bosom. She dared to look. His eyes were open, 
conscious, intelligent. 

“Evan! . . . Evan! . . .” she cried and sank on 
her knees beside him. Tier eyes devoured his face, 
and he smiled. 

“Doctor—Doctor,” she cried, “is he—will 

he-” 

“I think,” said the doctor, “we can have him on 
his feet in a week, slightly damaged, of course.” 

“And I thought—I thought you would die,” she 
said. 

“Die!” Evan Pell’s voice, weak and faint, never¬ 
theless carried a note of surprise. “Er—of course 
not. I had not the slightest intention—of dying.” 
He fumbled for her hand. “Why my dear—I have 
—just come to—life.” 

“You would have given your life for me! . . . 
Oh, Evan, I love you! . . . and I’m so—so proud 
of you.” 

“Er—very gratifying,” said Evan. Then, for a 
moment he was silent, reflecting. 

“It is—very satisfying to—be in love,” he said. 
“I—like it.” Then. “I want you to—be proud—of 
me.” He smiled. “There’s just—one thing—I am 
proud of.” 


301 



CONTRABAND 


“What is that, sweetheart?” 

“The—er—way I—handled that doorknob—with 
so little practice,” he said. “It was—er—so foreign 
to my training. . . . It—showed adaptability. . . 


THE END 


H 6 69 

















































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